Ultrashort pulse propagation, pulse breakup, and fundamental soliton formation in a single-mode optical fiber

The propagation of ultrashort (0.83 ps), intense dye laser pulses through a single-mode optical fiber is investigated. The input wavelength is tuned in the vicinity of the zero dispersion wavelength of the fiber. Although the input power is sufficient to generate solitons of up to the tenth order we do not observe the formation of high-order solitons. Instead, the input pulse breaks up temporally and spectrally after an initial stage of narrowing, and an ultrashort Stokes pulse is formed which shifts continuously to lower frequencies with increasing fiber length. The parameters of this pulse closely correspond to those of the fundamental soliton solution of the nonlinear Schroedinger equation. Using fiber lengths from a few meters up to 1 km the resulting pulse durations lie between 55 and 410 fs and the corresponding wavelengths between 1.36 and 1.54 μm. Numerical simulations solving a modified nonlinear Schroedinger equation including higher order dispersion and the Raman effect are in good agreement with the experimental results. It is shown that the principal soliton pulse shaping mechanisms are pulse narrowing and the soliton self-frequency shift.