Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Lecture 1 Fundamentals of Optical Soliton Theory in Fibers.- Lecture 2 Hamiltonian Theory of Bäcklund Transformation.- Lecture 3 Stability of Solitons.- Lecture 4 Chaotic Dynamics of Optical Solitons.- Lecture 5 Variationalism and Empirio-Criticism. (Exact and Variational Approaches to Fibre Optics Equations).- Lecture 6 Propagation of Optical Pulses in Nonlinear Systems with Varying Dispersion.- Lecture 7 Dispersion-Managed Solitons.- Lecture 8 Dispersion-Managed Solitons: Applications to Terabit/s Transmission over Transoceanic Distances.- Lecture 9 Nonlinear Pulses in Ultra-Fast Optical Communications.- Lecture 10 Soliton Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing System: From Numerical Design to Recirculating Loop Experiments.- Lecture 11 Mode-Locked Fiber Ring Lasers and Fiber Ring Memories.- Lecture 12 Modulational Instabilities in Passive Cavities: Theory and Experiment.- Lecture 13 Recent Developments in the Theory of Optical Gap Solitons.- Lecture 14 Vector Modulational Instabilities and Soliton Experiments.- Lecture 15 Transient Raman Amplification.- Lecture 16 Self-Structuration of Three-Wave Dissipative Solitons in CW-Pumped Optical Cavities.- Lecture 17 The Description of the Ultrashort Pulse Propagation in Non-Linear Media Under Quasi-Resonance Condition.- Lecture 18 Bright Spatial Soliton Interactions.- Lecture 19 Spatial Solitons in Saturating Nonlinear Materials.- Lecture 20 Discrete Solitons in Nonlinear Waveguide Arrays.- Lecture 21 Solitons in Cavities with Quadratic Nonlinearities.

1 2 V. E. Zakharov and S. Wabnitz 1 L. D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, 2 Kosygin Str. , 117334 Moscow, Russia 2 Laboratoire de Physique, University of Bourgogne, 9 avenue A. Savary, 21078 Dijon, France After about a quarter of a century since the first theoretical predictions of op tical solitons, the industrial application of the optical soliton concept is near to reality in the booming field of modern telecommunications, where the de mand for high-speed data transmission and routing is of ever-growing. This book contains a set of lectures that were presented at a Les Houches school on optical solitons in September 1998. The school was successful in gathering among the lecturers most of the well-recognized world leaders in the field of optical solitons. A variety of different aspects of research into optical solitons was exposed in the lectures, ranging from the mathematical fundations of integrability theory to the rapidly evolving technological advances of fiber soliton-based telecommu nication systems. The overall impression that the participants and the students received from the school is that this field of research is an excellent example of the rapid transfer that occurs nowadays from basic science to the technological implementations of the first principles. The subjects that were covered by the lectures can be broadly grouped into four main categories: optical soliton the ory, fiber soliton telecommunications, optical soliton generation methods, and all-optical information processing via spatial solitons.