Electrostrictive contribution to the intensity-dependent refractive index of optical fibers

We show that electrostriction contributes significantly to self-action effects in optical fibers, adding 19% to the nonlinear refractive index for fields that vary slowly compared with the similar to 1-ns time scale of the acoustic response. Electrostriction also modifies the tensor nature of the nonlinear-optical response. The electrostrictive nonlinearity is the origin of the observed difference between measurements of n(2) with cw and mode-locked lasers. (C) 1996 Optical Society of America