Third- and fourth-order active dispersion compensation with a phase modulator in a terabit-per-second optical...

Broadening of the pulse waveforms by the higher-order dispersion of a transmission line is a critical limiting factor in achieving terabit-per-second optical time-division multiplexed (OTDM) transmission with femtosecond pulses. We show that the third- and fourth-order dispersion of a transmission line can be simultaneously compensated for by use of a phase modulator. In this method, sinusoidal phase modulation applied to the linearly chirped pulse before transmission compensates for the phase shift caused by the third- and fourth-order dispersion of the transmission line. The pulse broadening of a 380-fs pulse after a 70-km transmission in a 1.28-Tbit/s OTDM experiment was as small as 20 fs.