Penalty-free dispersion-managed soliton transmission over a 100-km low-loss PCF

A long photonic-crystal fiber (PCF) with a low loss was successfully fabricated by first preparing a large pure silica glass preform. The fiber is 100 km long and has a low loss of 0.3 dB/km at 1550 nm. The fiber has a Rayleigh scattering coefficient of 0.85 dB/(km/spl middot//spl mu/m/sup 4/), which is the lowest value ever reported in a PCF. Using this fiber, the first penalty-free dispersion-managed soliton transmission at 10 Gb/s was achieved in a PCF.