Spectral broadening of a multimode continuous-wave optical field propagating in the normal dispersion regime of a fiber.

We investigate experimentally and theoretically the broadening of the optical spectrum of a multimode cw field propagating in the normal dispersion regime of a single-mode fiber. The width of the optical spectrum is not a monotonic function of propagation length. This behavior arising from the interplay between the Kerr effect and group-velocity dispersion contrasts with spectral broadening of mode-locked pulses.