Dynamical diversity of pulsating solitons in a fiber laser

TL;DR

This paper uses real-time spectroscopy to explore diverse pulsating behaviors of solitons in fiber lasers, revealing new dynamics including explosive events, rogue waves, and multi-soliton interactions, enriching understanding of dissipative soliton behavior.

Contribution

It extends the concept of soliton pulsation from single to multi-soliton systems and uncovers various pulsation regimes and associated phenomena in fiber lasers.

Findings

Observation of weak to strong explosive pulsations.

Detection of rogue wave generation during explosions.

Identification of synchronized pulsations in multi-soliton molecules.

Abstract

Pulsating behavior is a universal phenomenon in versatile fields. In nonlinear dissipative systems, the solitons could also pulsate under proper conditions and show many interesting dynamics. However, the pulsation dynamics is generally concerned with single soliton case. Herein, by utilizing real-time spectroscopy technique, namely, dispersive Fourier-transform (DFT), we reveal the versatile categories of pulsating solitons in a fiber laser. In particular, the weak to strong explosive behaviors of pulsating soliton, as well as the rogue wave generation during explosions were observed. Moreover, the concept of soliton pulsation was extended to the multi-soliton case. It is found that the simultaneous pulsation of energy, separation and relative phase difference could be observed for solitons inside the molecule, while the pulsations of each individual in multi-soliton bunch could be regular or irregular. These findings would further enrich the ultrafast dynamics of dissipative solitons in nonlinear optical systems.