Stochastic interference in a dispersive fiber excited by a partially coherent source

We have investigated the stochastic interference of two temporally separated pulses in optical fiber due to chromatic dispersion of the fiber and partial coherence of the source. An analytical expression for the correlation function that describes the stochastic interference is derived. The results show that the correlation function becomes negligibly small as the temporal coherence of the source becomes very small and chromatic dispersion becomes very large and in this case, the total mean power is simply the sum of the power of individual pulses. Finally, the theory is extended to include the case of arbitrary number of temporally separated pulses.