Solitary waves in nonlinear dispersive systems with zero average dispersion

The dynamics of a solitary wave in a nonlinear lossy system with varying dispersion and periodic amplification is examined. It is demonstrated that in contrast to the traditional soliton model in which the average dispersion balances the nonlinearity, in a nonlinear system with varying dispersion, stable pulse propagation is possible even if the average dispersion is zero. As a practical example. we demonstrate dispersion-managed soliton transmission in a cascaded optical amplifier system at zero average dispersion. The possibility of transmitting a soliton with finite energy at zero dispersion (when timing jitter is suppressed) is very attractive for practical applications.