Soliton trapping in birefringent optical fibers

Abstract

We show experimentally the trapping of orthogonally polarized solitons in birefringent optical fibers with polarization dispersions as high as 90 psec/km. Solitons along two axes of a fiber compensate for the polarization dispersion by shifting their frequencies, and we observe frequency splitting up to 1.03 THz for a polarization dispersion of 80 psec/km. For a 20-m fiber the energy required to compensate for the polarization dispersion is ~84 pJ, and for a 76m fiber the energy required reduces to ~64 pJ.