Numerical simulation of nonlinear pulse propagation in optical fibers with randomly varying birefringence

This paper is concerned with the evolution of nonlinear pulses driven by random polarization mode dispersion (PMD). The evolution of the slowly varying envelopes is governed by the stochastic Manakov equation, which has been derived as the limit of the Manakov PMD equation. The aim in this work is to investigate the effect of the PMD on Manakov's solitons and soliton wave-train propagation. I also study the statistical property of the differential group delay (DGD), and, using Monte Carlo simulations, I compute its probability density function. For linear pulses with zero group-velocity dispersion, I propose an algorithm, based on importance sampling, to estimate the outage probability, i.e., the probability that the value of the DGD exceeds an acceptance level. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America