Kerr effect management

Summary form only given. In the past few years, the optical Kerr effect compensation by the use of a material with a negative Kerr coefficient has been theoretically investigated for optical communication systems. The first experimental demonstration by S.U. Alam et al. (1999), was based on the nonlinear phase shift induced by a cascaded /spl chi//sup (2)/:/spl chi//sup (2)/ processes in a bulk periodically poled lithium niobate sample included in an optical amplifier setup. We present a demonstration of the compensation of an optical fiber Kerr effect by the use of a multi-quantum wells (MQW) AlGaAs channel waveguide. By adding an appropriate dispersion compensation, this approach could eventually be applicable to the 1.55-/spl mu/m communication window.