Longitudinal soliton tunneling in optical fiber.

We report the observation of the longitudinal soliton tunneling effect in axially varying optical fibers. A fundamental soliton, initially propagating in the anomalous dispersion region of a fiber, can pass through a normal dispersion barrier without being substantially affected. We perform experimental studies by means of spectral and temporal characterizations that show the evidence of the longitudinal soliton tunneling process. Our results are well supported by numerical simulations using the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation.