Overcoming Kerr-induced capacity limit in optical fiber transmission

Abstract

Getting around the capacity crunch The growing appetite for an ever-faster Internet and enhanced long-haul communication requires the pumping of more light down optic fibers. However, light-induced nonlinearities limit how much light can be pumped into the fiber without compromising the signal. This limitation has led to the prospect of a “capacity crunch.” Temprana et al. eliminated the effects of nonlinearity by using digital back-propagation methods with mutually coherent laser pulses from a single frequency comb. Science , this issue p. 1445