Fiber transmission for sub-500-fs pulses using a dispersion-compensating fiber

Abstract

We report transmission of /spl sim/60-fs and /spl sim/245-fs pulses, respectively, over 42-m and 2.5-km fiber links which consist of standard single-mode fibers (SMF) concatenated with dispersion-compensating fibers (DCF). The experiments using very short pulses (/spl sim/60 fs) over a short fiber length (/spl sim/42 m) demonstrate the ability to achieve simultaneous dispersion and dispersion slope compensation using this technique. Femtosecond spectral interferometry measurements of this 42-m link show that its residual dispersion slope is approximately six times lower than that of the dispersion-shifted fiber. Finally, to demonstrate that the dispersion-limited propagation distance is proportional to the cube of the pulsewidth, we transmit /spl sim/245-fs pulses over a 2.5-km SMF-DCF link and achieve comparable pulse restoration as with the shorter fiber experiments.