Pulse dispersion in a clad lens-like medium

The effects of a homogeneous cladding on the dispersion of a square-law dielectric guide are investigated using a perturbation technique. Assuming a Gaussian, band-limited input it is shown that for single mode operation the waveguide dispersion is of the order of the material dispersion. For multimode operation the effect of the cladding on the uniformly polarized modes is examined and it is shown that a significant interaction occurs only for the two modes closest to cut-off. Comparison is made between theoretical and experimental results. The perturbation technique is used to analyse the optimum index profile proposed by Okamoto and Okoshi. It is shown that this variation reduces the dispersion to below that of the infinite medium approximation.