Observation of soliton explosions in a passively mode-locked fiber laser

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of soliton explosions in a passively mode-locked fiber laser, revealing abrupt structural collapses and recoveries of dissipative solitons through spectral and temporal measurements.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental evidence of soliton explosions in fiber lasers, combining spectral and time-domain analysis with numerical simulations.

Findings

Detection of explosion signatures in shot-to-shot spectra

Observation of abrupt temporal shifts in pulse train

Agreement between experimental results and numerical simulations

Abstract

Soliton explosions are among the most exotic dissipative phenomena studied in mode-locked lasers. In this regime, a dissipative soliton circulating in the laser cavity experiences an abrupt structural collapse, but within a few roundtrips returns to its original quasi-stable state. In this work we report on the first observation of such events in a fiber laser. Specifically, we identify clear explosion signatures in measurements of shot-to-shot spectra of an Yb-doped mode-locked fiber laser that is operating in a transition regime between stable and noise-like emission. The comparatively long, all-normal-dispersion cavity used in our experiments also permits direct time-domain measurements, and we show that the explosions manifest themselves as abrupt temporal shifts in the output pulse train. Our experimental results are in good agreement with realistic numerical simulations based on an iterative cavity map.