DIRECT MEASUREMENT OF PULSE DISTORTION NEAR THE ZERO-DISPERSION WAVELENGTH IN AN OPTICAL-FIBER BY FREQUENCY-RESOLVED OPTICAL GATING

The technique of frequency-resolved optical gating is used to characte rize the intensity and the phase of picosecond pulses after propagatio n through 700 m of fiber at close to the zero-dispersion wavelength. U sing the frequency-resolved optical gating technique, we directly meas ure the severe temporal distortion resulting from the interplay betwee n self-phase modulation and higher-order dispersion in this regime. Th e measured intensity and phase of the pulses after propagation are fou nd to be in good agreement with the predictions of numerical simulatio ns with the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. (C) 1997 Optical Society o f America.