EFFECTIVE CONTROL OF A SOLITON BY SLIDING-FREQUENCY GUIDING FILTERS

A singular perturbation method is used to analyze the effect of slidin g-frequency guiding filters on an optical soliton, which has been prop osed to be used as a bit carrier in fiber-optics communication systems . We find that there is a broad range of physical parameters, only ins ide of which would the sliding-frequency filter scheme operate stably. The lower limit (in soliton energy) of this parameter regime was foun d earlier by Mollenauer et al. [Opt. Lett. 17, 1575 (1992)] and by Kod ama et al. [Opt. Lett. 18, 1311 (1993)] and is determined by whether t he soliton will continue to stay in synchronization with the array of filters. The upper limit is determined when the comoving dispersive wa ves that are continually being generated by the filtering are no longe r decaying and instead start to grow and generate, finally, a secondar y soliton. This upper limit was discovered recently in both experiment s and numerical simulations by Mamyshev and Mollenauer [Opt. Lett. 15, 2083 (1994)]. We have found a simple analytical estimate of this uppe r limit by the use of a singular perturbation method. Our analytical r esults agree well with the numerical and experimental findings of Mamy shev and Mollenauer. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.