ABSTRACT
Mode-locked ›ber lasers are normally operating in an environment in which the guided medium is a single-mode optical waveguide incorporating optical ampli›ers for compensating the medium’s losses. The energy levels of the optical ›elds circulating in the ›ber laser normally reach the nonlinear threshold level. Thus, the optical ›elds would experience both linear dispersion and nonlinear distortion effects, and the nonlinear phase noises. These effects result in the phase-to-amplitude conversion of the ampli›er noises under nonlinear operating conditions, and hence phase perturbation on optically modulated signals. This chapter presents the dispersion and nonlinearity effects in active MLFLs whose analysis has also been described in Chapter 2.
