Fiber Bragg grating dispersion-managed multisolitons

We show that third-order dispersion, filtering, and amplification in a fibe r Bragg grating dispersion-managed soliton system can lead to the formation of bound multisoliton solutions. We have found that these solutions appear due to the presence of nonsymmetrical terms in the transfer function of ch irped gratings. We present an analytical approximation for the time delay o f a chirped grating in the vicinity of the central frequency that takes int o account higher-order dispersion terms. We also study the tolerance of the se newly found multisoliton solutions to the presence of third-order disper sion in the fiber link and to random variations in the gratings parameters due to manufacture or variations in the operating conditions. (C) 2001 Opti cal Society of America.