Simulations of rare events in fiber optics by interacting particle systems

In this paper we study the robustness of linear pulses, solitons, and dispersion-managed solitons, under the influence of random perturbations. First, we address the problem of the estimation of the outage probability due to polarization-mode dispersion. Second, we compare the pulse broadening due to random fluctuations of the group-velocity dispersion. We use an original interacting particle system to estimate the tails of the probability density functions of the pulse widths. A new adaptative Monte Carlo method is applied that enforces the simulations to probe the regions of practical importance by selection and mutation steps.