Observation of higher-order solitons in defocusing waveguide arrays

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental observation of higher-order solitons in defocusing waveguide arrays with saturable nonlinearity, highlighting their stability above a certain power and the influence of nonlinearity saturation on their existence.

Contribution

First experimental demonstration of higher-order solitons in defocusing waveguide arrays with saturable nonlinearity and analysis of their stability and existence conditions.

Findings

Higher-order solitons are stable above a critical power threshold.

Nonlinearity saturation affects the stability and existence domains of the solitons.

Multiple in-phase bright spots form the higher-order solitons.

Abstract

We observe experimentally higher-order solitons in waveguide arrays with defocusing saturable nonlinearity. Such solitons can comprise several in-phase bright spots and are stable above a critical power threshold. We elucidate the impact of the nonlinearity saturation on the domains of existence and stability of the observed complex soliton states.