Phase noise of dispersion-managed solitons

Abstract

We quantify noise-induced phase deviations of dispersion-managed solitons in optical fiber communications and femtosecond lasers. We first develop a perturbation theory for the dispersion-managed nonlinear Schrodinger equation (DMNLSE) in order to compute the noise-induced mean and variance of the soliton parameters. We then use the analytical results to guide importance-sampled Monte-Carlo simulations of the noise-driven DMNLSE. Comparison of these results with those from the original, un-averaged, governing equations confirm the validity of the DMNLSE as a model for many dispersion-managed systems, and quantify the increased robustness of dispersion-managed solitons with respect to noise-induced phase jitter.