Experimental investigation of soliton optical phase jitter

The soliton optical phase stability versus amplified spontaneous noise is investigated in a recirculation loop experiment in the presence of in-line filters. The behavior of phase fluctuations is shown to be in good agreement with numerical simulations. The phase standard deviation is kept below 0.15/spl times//spl pi/ for distances up to 8000 km. We, therefore, demonstrate the feasibility of phase-shift keying on solitons for long-haul transmission systems.