Shedding and interaction of solitons in weakly disordered optical fibers

The propagation of the soliton pattern through optical fiber with weakly disordered dispersion coefficient is considered. Solitons perturbed by this disorder radiate and, as a consequence, decay. The average radiation profile is found. Emergence of a long-range intrachannel interaction between the solitons (mediated by this radiation) is reported. We show that soliton in a multisoliton pattern experiences a random jitter: intersoliton separation is zero mean Gaussian random field. Fluctuations of this separation are estimated by δy∼Dz²(μ), where D measures the disorder strength, z is the propagation distance, and μ stands for the transmission rate (number of solitons per unit length of the fiber). Direct numerical simulations are used to validate theoretical predictions for single soliton decay and two-soliton interaction. Relevance of these results to fiber optics communication technology is discussed.