Dynamics of ultrashort pulses near zero dispersion wavelength

The adiabatic dynamics of solitons under the action of third-order dispersion (TOD), the Raman effect, and self-steepening is studied. Using equations that describe the evolution of the pulse parameters, it is shown that the interplay between these effects results in nontrivial pulse dynamics. It is found that positive TOD slows down the self-frequency shift. The theory also describes the eventual suppression of the self-frequency shift in fibers with negative TOD that was recently observed in experiments and described theoretically. The relations of our results to supercontinuum generation are discussed.