Fiber Transmission for Sub-500-fs Pulses Using a Dispersion-Compensating Fiber

We report transmission of 60-fs and 245-fs pulses, respectively, over 42-m and 2.5-km fiber links which consist of standard single-mode fibers (SMF) concatenated with dispersion-compensating fibers (DCF). The experiments using very short pulses ( 60 fs) over a short fiber length ( 42 m) demonstrate the ability to achieve simultaneous dispersion and dispersion slope compensation using this technique. Femtosecond spectral interferometry measurements of this 42-m link show that its residual dispersion slope is approximately six times lower than that of the dispersion-shifted fiber. Finally, to demonstrate that the dispersion-limited propagation distance is proportional to the cube of the pulsewidth, we transmit 245-fs pulses over a 2.5-km SMF–DCF link and achieve comparable pulse restoration as with the shorter fiber experiments.