Fiber nonlinearities have long been regarded as being mostly harmful for fiber-optic communication systems. Over the last few years, however, the nonlinear effects in fibers are increasingly being used for practical applications. In the first part of this tutorial I review the major nonlinear effects, focusing mainly on their potentially useful applications in designing modern optical systems. The second part is devoted to highly nonlinear fibers, such as tapered, microstructured, and photonic-crystal fibers, with emphasis on their applications. Topics covered include ultrahigh Raman-induced frequency shifts, soliton fission, four-wave mixing, and supercontinuum generation.

Govind P. Agrawal is a Professor of Optics and a Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester. His previous appointments were at Ecole Polytechnique, France, City University of New York, and AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is an author or coauthor of more than 300 research papers, multiple review articles, and seven books. The fourth edition of his well-known book on Nonlinear Fiber Optics appeared in 2007. Professor Agrawal is a Fellow of both the Optical society of America and IEEE. He served as an associate Editor of JOSA B from 1993 to 1998 and of Optics Express from 2001 to 2004. He is currently serving on the Publication Council of Optical society of America.