Real-time measurements of dissipative solitons in a mode-locked fiber laser

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates real-time measurement techniques to observe the complex transient dynamics of dissipative solitons in a mode-locked fiber laser, revealing detailed spectral and temporal evolution during stabilization.

Contribution

It introduces dispersive Fourier transform and time lens methods for real-time tracking of dissipative solitons, enabling detailed analysis of their transient behavior.

Findings

Real-time spectral and temporal evolution of dissipative solitons captured.

Observation of complex break-up and collision dynamics during laser turn-on.

Reconstruction of soliton amplitude, phase, and eigenvalue spectrum.

Abstract

Dissipative solitons are remarkable localized states of a physical system that arise from the dynamical balance between nonlinearity, dispersion and environmental energy exchange. They are the most universal form of soliton that can exist in nature, and are seen in far-from-equilibrium systems in many fields including chemistry, biology, and physics. There has been particular interest in studying their properties in mode-locked lasers producing ultrashort light pulses, but experiments have been limited by the lack of convenient measurement techniques able to track the soliton evolution in real-time. Here, we use dispersive Fourier transform and time lens measurements to simultaneously measure real-time spectral and temporal evolution of dissipative solitons in a fiber laser as the turn-on dynamics pass through a transient unstable regime with complex break-up and collision dynamics before stabilizing to a regular mode-locked pulse train. Our measurements enable reconstruction of the soliton amplitude and phase and calculation of the corresponding complex-valued eigenvalue spectrum to provide further physical insight. These findings are significant in showing how real-time measurements can provide new perspectives into the ultrafast transient dynamics of complex systems.