Low-noise picosecond soliton transmission by use of concatenated nonlinear amplifying loop mirrors

We compare two systems that are specially configured with loop mirrors to provide stable picosecond soliton transmission. One configuration, created by Smith and Doran [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 12, 1117 (1995)], uses nonlinear optical loop mirrors. This configuration is compared with another that uses nonlinear amplifying loop mirrors, the configuration of which we systematically determine from the amplitude and the pulse-width switching characteristics of the nonlinear optical loop mirror. It is found that the nonlinear optical loop mirror configuration allows stable pulse transmission with much less dispersive background waves than does the nonlinear optical loop mirror configuration. This clean performance is obtained at the cost of slightly lessening the parameter region of global stability of pulses. A technique for accurately estimating the region of global stability for amplitude and pulse-width perturbations of the stable pulse is also given. © 1997 Optical Society of America [S0740-3224(97)02804-X]