Dramatically improved transmission of ultrashort solitons through 40 km of dispersion-decreasing fiber.

A 40-km length of optical f iber whose group-velocity dispersion decreases exponentially along its length has been fabricated. We experimentally compare the propagation of picosecond solitons through the dispersiondecreasing fiber with that through a constant-dispersion fiber of the same path-averaged dispersion. For a wide range of input powers, the output pulse widths of the dispersion-decreasing fiber are found to be as short as the input pulse widths, whereas the output pulse widths of the constant-dispersion fiber are signif icantly larger. Numerical simulations of the experiment are performed and are in good agreement with the experimental results.  1995 Optical Society of America