Most of the material in this volume is new. The first three chapters deal with three important fiber-optic components--fiber-based gratings, couplers, and interferometers--that serve as the building blocks of lightwave technology. In view of the enormous impact of rare-earth-doped fibers, amplifiers and lasers made by using such fibers are covered in Chapters 4 and 5. The last three chapters describe important applications of nonlinear fiber optics and are devoted to pulse-compression techniques, fiber-optic communication systems, and soliton-based transmission schemes
