Many-soliton bound states in dispersion-managed optical fiber: Possibility of fiber-optic transmission of three bits per clock period

We study the stability and the dynamics of many-soliton molecules in dispersion-managed (DM) optical fibers with focus on five-and seven-soliton molecules by analytical and numerical means. In particular we calculate the binding force, pulse durations and equilibrium separations using a variational approach. Predicted pulse shapes are in good agreement with those found by numerical simulations of the underlying nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Within limitations, soliton molecules with up to seven solitons possibly allow to encode three bits of data per clock period.