Modulational instability in optical fibers with randomly-kicked normal dispersion

TL;DR

This paper investigates how random and periodic perturbations in the dispersion of optical fibers influence modulational instability, revealing the emergence of low frequency side lobes and the effects of randomness on stability regions.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of MI in fibers with randomly-kicked normal dispersion, highlighting the impact of randomness on instability growth and stability regions.

Findings

Low frequency MI side lobes grow with perturbation strength.

Randomness in perturbation position diminishes MI side lobes.

Increased randomness in strength affects Arnold tongues less than randomness in position.

Abstract

We study modulational instability (MI) in optical fibers with random group velocity dispersion (GVD) generated by sharply localized perturbations of a normal GVD fiber that are either randomly or periodically placed along the fiber and that have random strength. This perturbation leads to the appearance of low frequency MI side lobes that grow with the strength of the perturbations, whereas they are faded by randomness in their position. If the random perturbations exhibit a finite average value, they can be compared with periodically perturbed fibers, where Arnold tongues appear. In that case, increased randomness in the strengths of the variations tends to affect the Arnold tongues less than increased randomness in their positions.