Femtosecond second-order solitons in optical fiber transmission

A propagation of the femtosecond second-order solitons in an optical fiber is studied. We show that a generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation well describes the propagation of the second-order soliton even containing only a few optical cycles. The propagations of a 50 fs and a 10 fs second-order soliton in an optical fiber are numerically simulated. It is found that, for the case of 10 fs second-order soliton, the soliton decay is dominated by the third-order dispersion, in contrast to the case of 50 fs second-order solitons, where the soliton decay is dominated by the delayed Raman response. It is also found that the exact delayed Raman response form must be used for the propagation of the 50 fs or less than 50 fs second-order soliton.