Dispersion-managed solitons as nonlinear Bloch waves

Abstract
It is shown that the dispersion-managed nonlinear pulse solutions can be viewed as nonlinear Bloch waves with a periodic scattering potential that is set up self-consistently by the wave itself. The pulses are shown to be chirp-free at the center of each dispersion segment. The essential physical mechanism is explained by the interaction of the m=0 and the m=2 Hermite–Gaussian components of the pulse.