  A number of simplified models, based on perturbation theory, have been
proposed for the fiber-optical channel and have been extensively used in the
literature. Although these models are mainly developed for the low-power
regime, they are used at moderate or high powers as well. It remains unclear to
what extent the capacity of these models is affected by the simplifying
assumptions under which they are derived. In this paper, we consider single
channel data transmission based on three continuous-time optical models i) a
regular perturbative channel, ii) a logarithmic perturbative channel, and iii)
the stochastic nonlinear Schr\"odinger (NLS) channel. We apply two simplifying
assumptions on these channels to obtain analytically tractable discrete-time
models. Namely, we neglect the channel memory (fiber dispersion) and we use a
sampling receiver. These assumptions bring into question the physical relevance
of the models studied in the paper. Therefore, the results should be viewed as
a first step toward analyzing more realistic channels. We investigate the
per-sample capacity of the simplified discrete-time models. Specifically, i) we
establish tight bounds on the capacity of the regular perturbative channel; ii)
we obtain the capacity of the logarithmic perturbative channel; and iii) we
present a novel upper bound on the capacity of the zero-dispersion NLS channel.
Our results illustrate that the capacity of these models departs from each
other at high powers because these models yield different capacity pre-logs.
Since all three models are based on the same physical channel, our results
highlight that care must be exercised in using simplified channel models in the
high-power regime.
