Modulational instability in optical fibers with arbitrary higher-order dispersion and delayed Raman response

We analyse modulational instability (MI) of electromagnetic waves in a large variety of optical fibers having different refractive-index profiles. For the normal-, anomalous-, and zero-dispersion regimes of the wave propagation, we show that whenever the second-order dispersion competes with higher-order dispersion (HOD), propagation of plane waves leads to a rich variety of dynamical behaviors. Most of the richness comes from the existence of critical behaviors, which include situations in which the HOD suppresses MI in the anomalous dispersion regime, and other situations in which the HOD acts in the opposite way by inducing non-conventional MI processes in the normal- and anomalous-dispersion regimes. We show that non-conventional MI sidebands are more prone to Raman-induced degradations than ordinary MI sidebands can be.