POLARIZATION SCATTERING BY SOLITON-SOLITON COLLISIONS

We have discovered experimentally that soliton-soliton collisions in w avelength division multiplexing significantly alter the polarization s tates of the colliding solitons. Analysis shows that the change in pol arization is according to the cross product of the Stokes vectors of t he colliding solitons. Birefringence of the fiber spans can turn this polarization scattering into a significant source of timing jitter. (C ) 1995 Optical Society of America