Useful and detrimental aspects of self-phase modulation in fiber optical applications

This paper reviews the features of self-phase modulation (SPM) in single-mode optical fibers and discusses the useful and detrimental aspects of this fiber nonlinearity with respect to fiber optical transmission and device applications. After a short introduction to the physical origin of self-phase modulation in fibers the following topics will be addressed: transmission system limitations due to SPM, soliton propagation, optical pulse compression, modulational instability.