Nonlinear pulse dynamics in multimode silicon core optical fibers.

Multimode propagation in silicon core optical fibers is investigated via numerical modeling of the coupled mode equations. The simulations consider spectral evolution in two fibers with different micrometer-sized cores that have experimentally been shown to exhibit nonlinear broadening. The results indicate that most of the coupled power is propagated in the fundamental mode of each fiber, with a small contribution from the higher-order modes affecting the spectral shape but not the width of the broadening.