On the characteristics of an optical pulse propagation in an inhomogeneous fibre and dispersion management

Properties of an optical pulse propagating in an optical fibre whose refractive index is inhomogeneous in the transverse direction are studied. A variational technique has been used to study the change in an initially chirped Gaussian pulse with a ‘sech’ type amplitude. The nonlinear ordinary differential equations so generated are studied numerically to analyze their stability properties in several physical situations. In the second part of the paper, we discuss how the technique of dispersion management can be applied to the problem. The space variation of amplitude, chirp, etc. are obtained numerically and it is found that their behaviours are sensitive to the sign of ‘s’, the coefficient of inhomogeneity, when dispersion management is there and also on the amplification distance Za.