We show that third-order dispersion, filtering, and amplification in a fiber Bragg grating dispersion-managed soliton system can lead to the formation of bound multisoliton solutions. We have found that these solutions appear due to the presence of nonsymmetrical terms in the transfer function of chirped gratings. We present an analytical approximation for the time delay of a chirped grating in the vicinity of the central frequency that takes into account higher-order dispersion terms. We also study the tolerance of these newly found multisoliton solutions to the presence of third-order dispersion in the fiber link and to random variations in the gratings parameters due to manufacture or variations in the operating conditions. © 2001 Optical Society of America.

This work has been supported by the Comisio´n Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnologı´a, Spain, Projects TIC 99-0645-c05-03 and PB-96-0819.

Peer Reviewed