Observation of a Raman-induced interpulse phase migration in the propagation of an ultrahigh-bit-rate coherent soliton train.

Coherent soliton packets generated in a passively mode-locked fiber laser are transmitted through 23km of dispersion-decreasing fiber. We observe a shift of the phase difference between solitons that is due to intrapulse Raman scattering. We attribute the stability in propagation of these trains to a trade-off between minimizing soliton-soliton interactions by reduction of the pulse width and minimizing this Raman-induced phase migration, which can force the solitons into a deleterious attractive phase relationship. We are thus able to demonstrate the propagation of 177-Gbit/s soliton packets over a distance of 123 soliton periods.