Nonlinear Kerr interactions between modulated waves propagating in a single-mode fiber

The interactions induced by the nonlinear refractive index in a single-mode optical fiber (Kerr effect) between a modulated wave and a carrier wave have been investigated for amplitude shift keying (ASK), frequency shift keying (FSK), and phase shift keying (PSK). The theoretical analysis, based on a time-domain solution, exploits the well-known formalism of self-phase modulation to describe the propagation of the input electric field in the fiber. The theoretical results were validated experimentally for amplitude- and phase-modulated waves with heterodyne detection techniques. These experiments mimic a coherent transmission system and allow the measurement of the spectrum of each of the waves that participate in the nonlinear interaction