Soliton Propagation in Optical Fibers

Russell Herman
UNC Wilmington
March 21, 2003

Outline
History
Optical Fibers
Transmission
Communications

Linear Wave Propagation

Nonlinear Schrdinger Equation
Solitons
Other Fiber Characteristics

Geometric Optics
Reflection
Refraction
Total Internal Reflection
n1 sin 1 n2 sin 2

Internal Reflection in Water

Daniel Colladon
1826 velocity of sound in water
Introduced Compressed air
1841 Beam in jet of water

John Tyndall
1853 Royal Institute talks
1854 needed demo
Faraday suggested demo

Sir Francis Bolton

1884 Illuminated Fountains, London

Internal Reflection in Glass

Glass Egypt 1600 BCE
Medievel glass blowers
1842 Jacques Babinet
Light Guided in Glass Rods
1880s William Wheeler
Patent for Light Pipes in Homes

Most glass is a mixture of silica obtained

from beds of fine sand or from
pulverized sandstone; an alkali to lower
the melting point, usually a form of soda
or, for finer glass, potash; lime as a
stabilizer; and cullet (waste glass) to assist
in melting the mixture. The properties of
glass are varied by adding other
substances, commonly in the form of
oxides, e.g., lead, for brilliance and weight;
boron, for thermal and electrical resistance;
barium, to increase the refractive index, as
in optical glass; cerium, to absorb infrared
rays; metallic oxides, to impart color; and
manganese, for decolorizing.
-http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0858420.html

Spun Glass Fibers

Rene de Reamur First in 18th Century
Charles Vernon Boys
Measurement of Delicate Forces Mass on thread
1887 First quartz fibers
Radiomicrometer measured candle heat over 2 mi

Herman Hammesfahr
Glass Blower, American Patent for glass fibers
Glass Fabric - Dresses for 1892 Worlds Fair - $30,000
Not Practical scratched, fibers easily broke

Owens-Illinois Glass Company

1931 Mass Production glass wool

Joint venture with Corning Glass Works => Owens-Corning Fiberglass

1935 Woven into Clothing without breaking!

Image Transmission
First Facsimile 1840s
Alexander Graham Bell 1875 Telautograph
Henry C. Saint-Rene
1895 First Bundle of glass rods

John Logie Baird

Mechanical TV inventor, London
1925 First Public Demo of TV
Bundle of Fibers, 8 lines/frame

Clarence W. Hansell
GE, RCA 300 Patents
1930 Bundling of fibers to transmit images

Heinrich Lamm
Medical Student - Munich
First transmitted fiber optic image - 1930

Light Leakage
Brian OBrien,
Opt. Soc. Am., Rochester

Abraham Van Heel

Netherlands, Periscopes, Scramblers
Metal Coating, Lacquer,
Cladding Hard clean, smooth, no touching

1952

Holger Moller Hansen

Gastroscope, 1951 Patent, rejected

Avram Hirsch Goldbogen

Mike Todd, 1950
Cinerama 3 cameras

Clad Optical Fibers

Hopkins and Kapany
Basil Hirshowitz
Gastroentologist
1956 First endoscope at U. Michigan

Lawrence E. Curtiss
Undergraduate
1956 First glass-clad fiber, tube+rod
$5500

J. Wilbur Hicks
Image Scramblers at AO => CIA

Wireless Communication
Optical Telegraphs
Semaphores

Bells Photophone 1880

Used Selenium, 700 ft

Wireless Marconi 1898

Communication Satellites
Arthur C. Clarke 1945
John R. Pierce 1950s

Optical Communication Concerns

Radio Competition
Bandwidth
Transparency

Pipes and Switches - Telephones

Wireless World, October 1945, pages 305-308

Bells Photophone

On Bell's Photophone...

http://www.alecbell.org/InventPhotophone.html

"The ordinary man...will find a little difficulty in comprehending how sunbeams are to be used. Does Prof.
Bell intend to connect Boston and Cambridge...with a line of sunbeams hung on telegraph posts, and, if so,
what diameter are the sunbeams to be...?...will it be necessary to insulate them against the weather...?...until
(the public) sees a man going through the streets with a coil of No. 12 sunbeams on his shoulder, and
suspending them from pole to pole, there will be a general feeling that there is something about Prof. Bell's
photophone which places a tremendous strain on human credulity."
New York Times Editorial, 30 August 1880
Source: International Fiber Optics & Communications, June, 1986, p.29

Bandwidth
C.W. Hansell RCA
1920s transatlantic 57 kHz, 5.26 km
1925 20 MHz, 15 m Vacuum Tubes
South America in Daytime lower cost
Telephone Engineers
Higher frequency & multiplexing (24-phone channels)
1939 500 MHz C.W. Hansell
Aimed for TV demands
WWII microwaves passed 1 GHz
Relay Towers 50 mi apart vs Coaxial Cables in 50s
Next?
Alec Harvey Reeves, 1937 ITT Paris/ 1950s STL
digital signals to lessen noise problems
Telepathy?
Shorter Wavelengths Weather problems

Waveguides
Hollow Pipes

BCs
Cutoff Wavelength
100 MHz Wavelength = 3 m => 1.5 waveguide
GHz 10 cm
Bell Circular, hollow, D=5 cm for 60 GHz/5 m 1950
Stewart E Miller

1956 Holmdel 3.2 km leakage from

bends/kinks
1958 50.8 mm, 80,000 conversations, 35-75
GHz, digitized => 160 million bits/s

Maxwells Equations
B
E
t

D
H J f
t
D f
B 0
D 0E P
B 0 H M

Wave Equation
E
P
E 0 0 2 0 2
t
t
2

Vaccum -

E ( E) 2 E
2
1

E
2E 2 2
c t

Linear and Homogeneous

Medium -

1
0 0

P (r, t ) 0 (1) E

1
v
0

(1 (1) ) 0 n 2 0

Waveguides add BCs => modes and cutoff frequency

Fiber Modes
%(r , )
E

it
E
(
r
,
t
)
e
dt

ei ( k r t )
E: E

or

% n ( ) E
%
0 E
2
c
2

Cylindrical Symmetry
Central Core + Cladding
Normalized Frequency

z (r, ) A( ) F ( )eim ei z
E
V k0 a n12 n22

Radial Equation
2
d 2 F 1 dF
m

[ 2 2 ]F 0
2
d
d

Solutions

2 n 2 k02 2

J m ( ), a
F ( )
K m ( ), a

BCs => Eigenvalue Problem for mj

Single Mode Condition (HE11)
Ex:

2 2 n 2 k02
2 2 k02 (n12 n 22 )

V k0 a n12 n22 2.405

n1 n2 0.005, a 4 m 1.2 m

Still Needed: coherent beams, clean fiber material

LASERs
Charles H. Townes
Coherent Microwave Oscillator MASER 1951
With Arthur L.Schawlow (Bell Labs) LASER
Theodore Maiman 1960
Hughes Research
Ruby laser
PRL rejected paper!
Ali Javan 1960
1.15 micrometer He-Ne Laser
First gas laser
First continuous beam laser
Later: Bell Labs 633 nm version
Visible, stable, coherent

Other Lasers
Semiconductor Laser 1962
Short endurance at -196 C

Communications problems
Ruby 25 mi could not see
He-Ne 1.6 mi large spread in good weather

Georg Goubau 1958

Beam Waveguides
15 cm x 970 m with 10 lenses

Rudolf Kompfner/Stewart E. Miller 1963

models of waveguides
Hollow Optical Light Pipes, Fiber Optics

The Transparency Problem

Light Pipes Confocal Waveguides
Impossible tolerances

Fibers mode problem

Multimodes messy
Pulse Spreading

Antoni Karbowiak/Len Lewin/Charles K. Kao, STL

Multimode Calculations 1960s
Rescaled microwave results by 100,000
Needed .001 mm too fine to see or handle

The Transparency Solution

C.K. Kao and George Hockham Single mode
fiber
Rods in air, energy along surface, low absorption loss
0.1-0.2 microns thick
Added Cladding! 1% index change => O(10)
increased diameter
Easier to focus light on core
New Problem light travels in core => optical losses
Paper loss can be < 20 dB/km 1965-6

Robert Maurer Corning first low loss fibers

Nonlinear Wave Equation

2
2
2

PNL
1

P
2 E 2 2 0 2L 0
c t
t
t 2

P (r, t ) 0 [ (1) E (2 ) &

EE (3) MEEE L ]

Isotropic
Nonlinear -

In Silica -

(1) n 2 1

(2) 0

Third harmonic generation, four wave mixing,

nonlinear refraction
n( ,| E | ) n( ) n2 | E |
2

3 (3)
n2 xxx
8n

Basic Propagation Equation

2 E% ( ) k02 E% 0

(1)
%
( ) 1
( )
xx

(n i

Assumptions:
PNL small
Polarization along length scalar
Quasimonochromatic small width
Instantaneous response
Neglect molecular vibrations

3
(3)
%

| E |2
xxxx
4

c 2
) n 2 2nn
2

n n2 | E |2

i
2k0

E%(r, 0 ) F ( x, y ) A( z, 0 )ei0 z
2
2 F 2 F
2
2 [ ( ) k0 ]F 0
2
x
y

2
A%
2i 0
( 02 ) A% 0
z

Amplitude Equation
2
A%
2i 0
( 02 ) A% 0
z

A
i[ ( ) 0 ] A
z

1
( ) 0 1 ( 0 ) 2 ( 0 ) 2 L
2
1
3 d 2n
1
2
vg
2 c 2 d 2
GVD Group Velocity Dispersion
= 0 near 1.27 m
>0 Normal dispersion
<0 Anomalous dispersion (Higher f moves slower)

Nonlinear Schrdinger Equation

A
A i
2 A
1
2 2 A i | A |2 A
z
t 2
t
2
Nonlinear Schrdinger Equation

T t 1 z

A 1 2 A
i
2 2 | A |2 A 0
z 2 T

Balance between dispersion and nonlinearity

Optical Solitons
Hasegawa and Tappert 1973
Mollenauer, et. al. 1980
7 ps, 1.2 W, 1.55 mm, single mode 700 m

Optical Losses

Solitons
John Scott Russell 1834
"... I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still
rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles per hour,
preserving its original figure some 30 feet long and a
foot to a foot and a half in height." - J.S. Russell

Airy, 50 yr dispute
Rayleigh and Bussinesq 1872
Korteweg and deVries 1895

ut 6uu x u xxx 0

Recreation in 1995 in Glasgow

Inverse Scattering Method

Kruskal and Zabusky - 1965

Gardner, Greene, Kruskal, Muira 1967
Zahkarov and Shabat NLS 70s
. Sine-Gordon, Toda Lattice, Relativity, etc.
AKNS Ablowitz, Kaup, Newell, Segur 1974

Two Soliton Solution of the NLS

u ( x t ) 4 e

i x

cosh ( 3 t ) 3 e

4 i x

cosh ( t )

cosh ( 4 t) 4 cosh ( 2 t) 3 cos ( 4 x)

Other Nonlinear Effects

A
A 1 2 A

2
i
i 1
1 2 i | A | A A
z
t 2
2
t
2
i
3 A

|
A
|
3 3 ia1 (| A |2 A) ia2 A
6
t
t
t
Soliton Perturbation Theory
Coupled NLS
Dark Solitons Normal Dispersion Regime
Raman Pumping

Summary
History
Optical Fibers
Transmission
Communications

Linear Wave Propagation

Nonlinear Schrdinger Equation
Solitons
Perturbations
Other Applications
Soliton Lasers and Switching
Coupled Equations