Optical puff mediated laminar-turbulent polarization transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates the probabilistic nature of the laminar-turbulent transition in a partially mode-locked fiber laser, introducing polarization rogue waves and analyzing puff dynamics to understand turbulence onset.

Contribution

It characterizes the probability of intermittency in laser polarization transition and introduces polarization rogue waves as a new phenomenon in this context.

Findings

Proliferation and decay of optical puffs determine turbulence onset.

Identification of polarization rogue waves at the transition point.

Probabilistic model provides new insights into laser turbulence physics.

Abstract

Various physical structures exhibit a fundamentally probabilistic nature over diverse scales in space and time, to the point that the demarcation line between quantum and classic laws gets blurred. Here, we characterize the probability of intermittency in the laminar-turbulence transition of a partially mode-locked fiber laser system, whose degree of coherence is deteriorated by multiple mode mixing. Two competing processes, namely the proliferation and the decay of an optical turbulent puff, determine a critical behavior for the onset of turbulence in such a nonlinear dissipative system. A new kind of optical rogue waves, polarization rogue waves, is introduced at the point of transition to polarization turbulence. The probabilistic description of the puff-mediated laminar-turbulence polarization transition provides an additional degree of freedom for our understanding of the complex physics of lasers.