Modal dispersion in optical fibers with arbitrary numerical aperture and profile dispersion

Design criteria to minimize modal dispersion have been found for a broad class of practical, multimode, circular-symmetric, isotropic, optical fibers having any numerical aperture and any profile dispersion (which is a function of the derivative of the index with respect to the wavelength). The impulse-response width of these fibers, the rms width of the impulse response, the optimum profiles to minimize those widths, and the sensitivity to profile departures from ideal are found to be surprisingly simple closed-form generalizations of previous results that are mostly applicable to fibers with small numerical aperture and constant profile dispersion. The minimum impulse-response width of the optimized fiber is a function only of its numerical aperture and consequently is independent of the index profile and of the profile dispersion.