On-demand harnessing of photonic soliton molecules

TL;DR

This paper presents an experimental method to control and generate photonic soliton molecules with specific temporal separations and wavelengths in a mode-locked fiber laser, advancing optical data processing capabilities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to harness and tune soliton molecule dynamics in a laser setup using dispersion and dispersion loss control.

Findings

Dispersion loss enables selection of specific temporal separations in soliton molecules.

The setup allows tuning of soliton molecules' central wavelength and hysteresis effects.

Multiple soliton molecules with preselected parameters can be generated.

Abstract

Soliton molecules (SMs) are fundamentally important modes in nonlinear optical systems. It is a challenge to experimentally produce SMs with a required temporal separation in mode-locked fiber lasers. Here, we propose and realize an experimental scenario for harnessing SM dynamics in a laser setup. In particular, we tailor SMs in a mode-locked laser controlled by second-order group-velocity dispersion and dispersion losses: the real part of dispersion maintains the balance between the dispersion and nonlinearity, while the dispersion loss determines the balance of gain and losses. The experimental results demonstrate that the dispersion loss makes it possible to select desired values of the temporal separation (TS) in bound pairs of SMs in the system. Tunability of the SM's central wavelength and the corresponding hysteresis are addressed too. The demonstrated regime allows us to create multiple SMs with preselected values of the TS and central wavelength, which shows the potential of our setup for the design of optical data-processing schemes.