Soliton Trapping in Birefringent Optical Fibers.

We show experimentally the trapping of orthogonally polarized solitons in birefringent optical fibers with polarization dispersions as high as 90 psec/km. Solitons along two axes of a fiber compensate for the polarization dispersion by shifting their frequencies, and we observe frequency splitting up to 1.03 THz for a polarization dispersion of 80 psec/km. For a 20 m fiber the energy required to compensate for the polarization dispersion is ~ 84 pJ, and for a 76 m fiber the energy reduces to ~ 64 pJ.