Odyssey of Light in Nonlinear Optical Fibers

1 Basic nonlinear fiber optics

K. Thyagarajan and Ghatak Ajoy

1.1 Introduction

With the development of extremely low loss optical fibers and their application to communication systems, a revolution has taken place over the last 35 years. With technological developments in the area of low loss optical fibers with optimum characteristics, optical fiber amplifiers and wavelength division multiplexing techniques in 2001, fiber optic communication at a rate of more than 1 terabit per second (which is roughly equivalent to the transmission of about 15 million simultaneous telephone conversations) through one hair-thin optical fiber was achieved. With further advances in modulation formats and other multiplexing schemes, transmission at the rate of ...