Stabilizing soliton transmission by third-order dispersion in dispersion-compensated fibre links

By means of systematic numerical simulations of pulse(soliton) transmission through a very long nearly dispersion-compensated nonlinear fibre link, including third-order dispersion (TOD), we demonstrate that, for a fixed pulse width, there is a broad interval of values of the pulse's peak power in which TOD stabilizes the transmission. In particular, TOD prevents decay of the pulse in the case when the mean second dispersion <(beta)over bar>(2) is (weakly) normal, <(beta)over bar>(2) > 0, and in the case where <(beta)over bar>(2) less than or equal to 0, TOD suppresses strong internal vibrations of the non-fundamental soliton, making it close to the fundamental one.