Propagation of pulses in optical fibers in the region of a dispersion minimum. Role of nonlinearity and higher-order dispersion

A numerical investigation is reported of the simultaneous influence of the Kerr nonlinearity and of the thirdorder dispersion on the envelope of picosecond pulses propagating in a single-mode optical fiber. It is shown that in the region of zero second-order dispersion ( k'' ω 2=0, λ ≈1.3 μ) the nonlinearity results in splitting of an input pulse into subpulses, causes its overall broadening, and induces an additional delay of the energy center of a wave packet compared with the linear case.