SOLITON ROBUSTNESS IN OPTICAL FIBERS

Simulations and experiments indicate that solitons in optical fibers are robust in the presence of Hamiltonian deformations such as higher-order dispersion and birefringence but are destroyed in the presence of non-Hamiltonian deformations such as attenuation and the Raman effect. Two hypotheses are introduced that generalize these observations and give a recipe for when deformations will be Hamiltonian. Concepts from nonlinear dynamics are used to make these two hypotheses plausible. Soliton stabilization with frequency filtering is also briefly discussed from this point of view.