Pump-wave effects on the propagation of noisy signals in nonlinear dispersive media

Abstract

Stochastic field propagation in nonlinear dispersive media is studied in the undepleted-pump approximation in both the normal- and the anomalous-dispersion regimes. A statistical description of modulational instability is given in the anomalous-dispersion regime. Nonlinear dispersive effects are present even in the normal-dispersion regime. Analytical results are obtained for the evolution of the power spectrum and the relative intensity noise and are confirmed by numerical simulations. The results are applied to the four-wave mixing of broadband signals in nonlinear dispersive media.