Dispersion-managed solitons in optical amplifier transmission systems with zero average dispersion

Soliton propagation in a cascaded dispersion-managed optical amplifier system with zero net dispersion is examined. We present a qualitative physical explanation for the recently discovered fact that a soliton with finite energy can propagate down a fiber line with zero or normal average dispersion. We describe a specific practical system for the main properties of such a soliton, namely, the dependence of the soliton power on the pulse width at chirp-free points and the soliton average energy and width at chirp-free points as functions of the dispersion-allocation (strength of the map) parameter. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.