(GVD) is a characteristic of a dispersive medium, used most often to determine how the medium will affect the duration of an optical pulse traveling through it. Formally, GVD is defined as the derivative of the inverse of group velocity of light in a material with respect to angular frequency,[1][2]
{displaystyle { extrm {GVD}}(omega _{0})equiv {frac {partial }{partial omega }}left({frac {1}{v_{g}(omega )}}
ight)_{omega =omega _{0}},}
where {displaystyle omega } and {displaystyle omega _{0}} are angular frequencies, and the group velocity {displaystyle v_{g}(omega )} is defined as {displaystyle v_{g}(omega )equiv partial omega /partial k} . The units of group velocity dispersion are [time]2/[distance], often expressed in fs2/mm.
Equivalently, group velocity dispersion can be defined in terms of the medium-dependent wave vector {displaystyle k(omega )} according to
{displaystyle { extrm {GVD}}(omega _{0})equiv left({frac {partial ^{2}k}{partial omega ^{2}}}
ight)_{omega =omega _{0}},}
or in terms of the refractive index {displaystyle n(omega )} according to
{displaystyle { extrm {GVD}}(omega _{0})equiv {frac {2}{c}}left({frac {partial n}{partial omega }}
ight)_{omega =omega _{0}}+{frac {omega _{0}}{c}}left({frac {partial ^{2}n}{partial omega ^{2}}}
ight)_{omega =omega _{0}}.}