Quasi-linear optical pulses in strongly dispersion-managed transmission systems

A unified analytical description of the evolution of quasi-linear optical pulses and solitons in strongly dispersion-managed transmission systems is developed. Asymptotic analysis of the nonlocal equation that describes the averaged dynamics of a dispersion-managed system shows that the nonlinearity decreases for large map strength s, as O(log s/s). The spectral intensity is found to be an invariant of the propagation, which allows the phase shift to be computed. These findings provide a clear description of pulse propagation in the quasi-linear regime, which is characterized by much lower energies than those required for stable dispersion-managed soliton transmission with the same dispersion map.