E-Book Overview
Since the 3rd edition appeared, a fast evolution of the field has occurred. The fourth edition of this classic work provides an up-to-date account of the nonlinear phenomena occurring inside optical fibers. The contents include such important topics as self- and cross-phase modulation, stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering, four-wave mixing, modulation instability, and optical solitons. Many new figures have been added to help illustrate the concepts discussed in the book.New to this edition are chapters on highly nonlinear fibers and and the novel nonlinear effects that have been observed in these fibers since 2000. Such a chapter should be of interest to people in the field of new wavelengths generation, which has potential application in medical diagnosis and treatments, spectroscopy, new wavelength lasers and light sources, etc. * Continues to be industry bestseller providing unique source of comprehensive coverage on the subject of nonlinear fiber optics * Fourth Edition is a completely up-to-date treatment of the nonlinear phenomena occurring inside optical fibers * Includes 2 NEW CHAPTERS on the properties of highly nonlinear fibers and their novel nonlinear effects
E-Book Content
Preface Since the publication of the first edition of this book in 1989, the field of nonlinear fiber optics has remained an active area of research and has thus continued to grow at a rapid pace. During the 1990s, a major factor behind such a sustained growth was the advent of fiber amplifiers and lasers, made by doping silica fibers with rare-earth materials such as erbium and ytterbium. Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers revolutionized the design of fiber-optic communication systems, including those making use of optical solitons, whose very existence stems from the presence of nonlinear effects in optical fibers. Optical amplifiers permit propagation of lightwave signals over thousands of kilometers as they can compensate for all losses encountered by the signal in the optical domain. At the same time, fiber amplifiers enable the use of massive wavelengthdivision multiplexing, a technique that led by 1999 to the development of lightwave systems with capacities exceeding 1 Tb/s. Nonlinear fiber optics plays an important role in the design of such high-capacity lightwave systems. In fact, an understanding of various nonlinear effects occurring inside optical fibers is almost a prerequisite for a lightwave-system designer. Starting around 2000, a new development occurred in the field of nonlinear fiber optics that changed the focus of research and has led to a number of advances and novel applications in recent years. Several kinds of new fibers, classified as highly nonlinear fibers, have been developed. They are referred to with names such as microstructured fibers, holey fibers, or photonic crystal fibers, and share the common property that a relatively narrow core is surrounded by a cladding containing a large number of air holes. The nonlinear effects are enhanced dramatically in such fibers to the extent that they can be observed even when the fiber is only a few centimeters long. Their dispersive properties are also quite different compared with those of conventional fibers developed for telecommunication applications. Because of these changes, microstructured fibers exhibit a variety of novel nonlinear effects that are finding applications in fields as diverse as optical coherence tomography and high-precision frequency metrology. The fourth edition is intended to bring the book up-to-date so that it remains a unique source of comprehensive coverage on the subject of nonlinear fiber optics. It retains most of the material that appeared in the third edition. However, an attempt was made to include recent research results on all topics relevant to the field of nonlinear fiber optics. Such an ambitious objective has increased the size of the book considerably. Two new chapt