Experimental demonstration of step-like dispersion profiling in optical fibre for soliton pulse generation and compression

Generation of 100 GHz trains of 500-700 fs pulses using dual-frequency beat conversion in a step-like dispersion profiled fibre is reported. The authors believe that this is the first time the generation and compression of soliton pulses using such a fibre has been demonstrated. The fabrication of such fibre assemblies does not require any special facilities and relies only on conventional optical fibre technology. They believe that the use of profiling the fibre dispersion by fibre segments instead of continuously dispersion-decreasing fibre is not only possible but preferable in many applications.