This book summarizes the proceedings of the invited talks presented at
the International Symposium of Physics and Application of Optical
Solitons in Fibers held in Kyoto during November 14 to 17,1995. As a
result of worldwide demand for ultra high bitrate transmissions and
increased scientific interests from the soliton community, research on
optical solitons in fibers has made a remarkable progress in recent
years. In view of these trends, and with the support of the Japanese
Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, the Research Group for Optical
Soliton Communications (ROSC), chaired by Akira Hasegawa, was
established in Japan in April 1995 to promote collaboration and
information exchange 'among communication service companies, industries
and academic circles in the theory and application of optical solitons.
This symposium was organized as a part of the ROSC activities. The
symposium attracted enthusiastic response by worldwide researchers
involved in this subject which has lead to the most intensive meeting
that the editor ever attended. The reader will find the contents to be
well-balanced among theory, experiment and technology. Although the
evaluation of the contents shall naturally depend on the particular area
of interest of the reader, the symposium has confirmed that the soliton
based light wave transmission has achieved the best result in one
channel, both in distance of transmission and in bitrate although in
wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) systems, NRZ transmission has yet
better result.