STABILIZING SOLITON TRANSMISSION BY 3RD-ORDER DISPERSION IN DISPERSION-COMPENSATED FIBER LINKS

By means of systematic numerical simulations of pulse(soliton) transmi ssion through a very long nearly dispersion-compensated nonlinear fibr e link, including third-order dispersion (TOD), we demonstrate that, f or a fixed pulse width, there is a broad interval of values of the pul se's peak power in which TOD stabilizes the transmission. In particula r, TOD prevents decay of the pulse in the case when the mean second di spersion <(beta)over bar>(2) is (weakly) normal, <(beta)over bar>(2) > 0, and in the case where <(beta)over bar>(2) less than or equal to 0, TOD suppresses strong internal vibrations of the non-fundamental soli ton, making it close to the fundamental one.