Effect of polarization mode dispersion in optical soliton transmission in fibers

Of all the statistical properties of fibers, those originating from polarization-dependent effects, which lead to the polarization mode dispersion (PMD), are the most important ones in ultra-high bit rate transmission beyond 10 Gb/s. Solitons are more robust against pulse distortions caused by PMD because of their nonlinear self-trapping property. In this paper, we discuss effects of PMD on soliton transmission. In particular, the dependence of the map strength of dispersion-managed solitons on robustness against PMD will be presented.