Nonlinear optical response of silica imposes a fundamental limit on the information transfer capacity in optical fibers. Communication beyond this limit requires higher signal power and suppression of nonlinear distortions to prevent irreversible information loss. The nonlinear interaction in silica is a deterministic phenomenon that can, in principle, be completely reversed. However, attempts to remove the effects of nonlinear propagation have led to only modest improvements, and the precise physical mechanism preventing nonlinear cancellation remains unknown. We demonstrate that optical carrier stability plays a critical role in canceling Kerr-induced distortions and that nonlinear wave interaction in silica can be substantially reverted if optical carriers possess a sufficient degree of mutual coherence. These measurements indicate that fiber information capacity can be notably increased over previous estimates.
We demonstrate a two-fold reach extension of 16 GBaud 16-Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) system based on erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA)-only amplified standard and single mode fiber -based link. The result is enabled by transmitter-side digital backpropagation and frequency referenced carriers drawn from a parametric comb.
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