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.
