In $χ^{(2)}$ three-wave mixing, the noise-seeded spatio--temporal modulational instability has a dramatic impact on the spatial-soliton dynamics, leading to the counterintuitive observation of a soliton with no apparent participation of the high-frequency field in the process.
We report on the experimental observation of temporal cavity soliton destabilization via spatiotemporal chaos in a coherently-driven optical fiber ring resonator. Numerical simulations and theoretical analyses are in good agreement with experimental observations.
We demonstrate a robust, stable, mobile, two-dimensional (2D) spatial and three-dimensional (3D) spatiotemporal optical soliton in the core of an optical vortex, while all nonlinearities are of the cubic (Kerr) type. The 3D soliton can propagate with a constant velocity along the vortex core without any deformation. Stability of the soliton under a small perturbation is established numerically. Two such solitons moving along the vortex core can undergo a quasi-elastic collision at medium velocities. Possibilities of forming such a 2D spatial soliton in the core of a vortical beam are discussed…
Real-Time Visualization of the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of 3D Solitons
State Key Laboratory of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications(北京邮电大学电子工程学院信息光子学与光通信国家重点实验室)
We study analytically and numerically a kind of diffractive resonant radiation emitted by spatial solitons, which is generated in waveguide arrays with Kerr nonlinearity. The phase matching condition between soliton and radiation is derived and agrees well with direct pulse propagation simulations. The folded dispersion due to the Brillouin zone leads to a peculiar anomalous soliton recoil that we describe in detail. A linear potential applied across the array generates the analogue of the Raman self-frequency shift in optical fibers, only now applied to the wavenumber. We demonstrate that it …
We demonstrate for a nonlinear photonic system that two highly asymmetric feedback delays can induce a variety of emergent patterns which are highly robust during the system's global evolution. Explicitly, two-dimensional chimeras and dissipative solitons become visible upon a space-time transformation. Switching between chimeras and dissipative solitons requires only adjusting two system parameters, demonstrating self-organization exclusively based on the system's dynamical properties. Experiments were performed using a tunable semiconductor laser's transmission through a Fabry-Perot resonato…
Spatio-temporal dynamics of singly resonant optical parametric oscillators with external seeding displays hexagonal, roll and honeycomb patterns, optical turbulence, rogue waves and cavity solitons. We derive appropriate mean-field equations with a sinc$^2$ nonlinearity and demonstrate that off-resonance seeding is necessary and responsible for the formation of complex spatial structures via self-organization. We compare this model with those derived close to the threshold of signal generation and find that back-conversion of signal and idler photons is responsible for multiple regions of spat…
We have developed an analytical model based on the perturbation theory in order to study the optical propagation of two successive intense solitons in hollow-core photonic crystal fibers filled with Raman-active gases. Based on the time delay between the two solitons, we have found that the trailing soliton dynamics can experience unusual nonlinear phenomena such as spectral and temporal soliton oscillations and transport towards the leading soliton. The overall dynamics can lead to a spatiotemporal modulation of the refractive index with a uniform temporal period and a uniform or chirped spat…
In optical second harmonic generation with normal dispersion, the virtually infinite bandwidth of the unbounded, hyperbolic, modulational instability leads to quenching of spatial multi-soliton formation and to the occurrence of a catastrophic spatio-temporal break-up when an extended beam is let to interact with an extremely weak external noise with coherence time much shorter than that of the pump.
New functionalities in nonlinear optics will require systems with giant optical nonlinearity as well as compatibility with photonic circuit fabrication techniques. Here we introduce a new platform based on strong light-matter coupling between waveguide photons and quantum-well excitons. On a sub-millimeter length scale we generate sub-picosecond bright temporal solitons at a pulse energy of only 0.5 pico-Joules. From this we deduce an unprecedented nonlinear refractive index 3 orders of magnitude larger than in any other ultrafast system. We study both temporal and spatio-temporal nonlinear ef…
We investigate dissipative nonlinear dynamics in graphene-based active metamaterials composed of randomly dispersed graphene nano-flakes embedded within an externally pumped gain medium. We observe that graphene saturable nonlinearity produces a sub-critical bifurcation of nonlinear modes, enabling self-organization of the emitted radiation into several dissipative soliton structures with distinct topological charges. We systematically investigate the existence domains of such nonlinear waves and their spatio-temporal dynamics, finding that soliton vortices are unstable, thus enabling self-org…
We study extreme events occurring in the transverse $(x,y)$ section of the field emitted by a broad-area semiconductor laser with a saturable absorber. The spatio-temporal events on which we perform the statistical analysis are identified as maxima of the field intensity in the 3D space $(x,y,t)$. We identify regions in the parameter space where extreme events are more likely to occur and we study the connection of those extreme events with the cavity solitons that are known to exist in the same system, both stationary and self-pulsing.
Using an example of a Raman active medium we describe how a common nonlinear process of four-wave mixing can be used to induce strong coupling between the spatial and temporal degrees of freedom in optical waves. This coupling produces several unexpected effects. Amongst those are cascaded excitation of multiply charged optical vortices, spatial focusing in a nonlinearly defocusing medium and generation of helically shaped spatio-temporal optical solitons.
Multi-ring necklace vortex solitons in Kerr nonlinear media with azimuthally modulated Bessel potentials
College of Physics and Electronics Engineering, Shanxi University(山西大学物理电子工程学院);Shanxi Key Laboratory of Wireless Communication and Detection(山西省无线通信与探测重点实验室);Department of Physical Electronics, School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University(特拉维夫大学电气工程学院物理电子学系);Instituto de Alta Investigación, Universidad de Tarapacá(塔拉帕卡大学高等研究院)
A new theoretical model is developed to characterize spatio-temporal mode-locking (ML) in quadratic nonlinear media. The model is based on the two-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation with coupling to a mean term (NLSM) and constructed as an extension of the master mode-locking model. It is numerically demonstrated that there exists steady state soliton solutions of the ML-NLSM mode-locking model that are astigmatic in nature. A full stability analysis and bifurcation study is performed for the ML-NLSM model and it is manifest that spatio-temporal mode-locking of the astigmatic steady-st…
Despite the abundance and importance of three-dimensional systems, relatively little progress has been made on spatiotemporal nonlinear optical waves compared to time-only or space-only systems. Here we study radiation emitted by three-dimensionally evolving nonlinear optical waves in multimode fiber. Spatiotemporal oscillations of solitons in the fiber generate multimode dispersive wave sidebands over an ultrabroadband spectral range. This work suggests routes to multipurpose sources of coherent electromagnetic waves, with unprecedented wavelength coverage.
Physics of counterpropagating optical beams and spatial optical solitons is reviewed, including the formation of stationary states and spatiotemporal instabilities. First, several models describing the evolution and interactions between optical beams and spatial solitons are discussed, that propagate in opposite directions in nonlinear media. It is shown that coherent collisions between counterpropagating beams give rise to an interesting focusing mechanism resulting from the interference between the beams, and that interactions between such beams are insensitive to the relative phase between …
We consider a wide-aperture surface-emitting laser with a saturable absorber section subjected to time-delayed feedback. We adopt the mean-field approach assuming a single longitudinal mode operation of the solitary VCSEL. We investigate cavity soliton dynamics under the effect of time- delayed feedback in a self-imaging configuration where diffraction in the external cavity is negligible. Using bifurcation analysis, direct numerical simulations and numerical path continuation methods, we identify the possible bifurcations and map them in a plane of feedback parameters. We show that for both t…
We demonstrate that the amplitudes of optical solitons in nonlinear multisequence optical waveguide coupler systems with weak linear and cubic gain-loss exhibit large stable oscillations along ultra-long distances. The large stable oscillations are caused by supercritical Hopf bifurcations of the equilibrium states of the Lotka-Volterra (LV) models for dynamics of soliton amplitudes. The predictions of the LV models are confirmed by numerical simulations with the coupled cubic nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) propagation models with $2 \le N \le 4$ pulse sequences. Thus, we provide the first demons…
We analyze experimentally and theoretically the spatio-temporal dynamics of a highly multimode semiconductor laser with coherent optical injection. Due to the particular geometry of the device (a 1~m long ring cavity), the multimode dynamics can be resolved in real time and we observe stable chiral solitons and domain dynamics. The experiment is analyzed in the framework of a set of effective semiconductor Maxwell-Bloch equations. We analyze the stability of stationary solutions and simulate both the complete model and a reduced rate equation model. This allows us to predict domain shrinking a…
Ultrafast fiber lasers play important roles in many aspects of our life for their various applications in fields ranging from fundamental sciences to industrial purposes. Passive mode-locking technique is a key step to realize the ultrafast soliton fiber lasers. However, the booting dynamics of the soliton fiber lasers have not yet been well understood. Herein, we reveal the soliton buildup dynamics of ultrafast fiber lasers operating both in anomalous and net-normal dispersion regimes. Based on the advanced experimental methodologies of spatio-temporal reconstruction and dispersive Fourier tr…
Multimode nonlinear optics offers to overcome a long-standing limitation of fiber optics, tightly phase locking several spatial modes and enabling the coherent transport of a wavepacket through a multimode fiber. A similar problem is encountered in the temporal compression of multi-mJ pulses to few-cycle duration in hollow gas-filled fibers. Scaling the fiber length to up to six meters, hollow fibers have recently reached 1 TW of peak power. Despite the remarkable utility of the hollow fiber compressor and its widespread application, however, no analytical model exists to enable insight into t…
In this paper, we carry out a theoretical investigation on the propagation of spatio-temporal solitons (light bullets) in the nonlinear metamaterial waveguides. Our theoretical study is based on the formulation of Lagrangian variational analysis with a suitable ansatz followed by a split-step Fourier method in confirming the outcomes former numerically. A particular emphasis is given to obtain the conditions on the system parameters for stable dynamics in negative as well as positive index regimes of metamaterial waveguides. Similar to the conventional medium, the three-dimensional (3D) light …
Dissipative solitons are localized solutions in non-integrable and non-conservative nonlinear system, due to a balance of nonlinearity, dispersion, filtering, and loss/gain. Different from conventional soliton, they exhibit extremely complex and striking dynamics, and are more universal in the far-from-equilibrium natural system. Taking advantage of dispersive Fourier transform and time lens, the spatio-temporal transient dynamics of dissipative solitons have been characterized with both amplitude and phase. Yet, a full avenue of the buildup process of dissipative soliton is full of debris for…
Dissipative solitons are self-localized structures resulting from a double balance between dispersion and nonlinearity as well as dissipation and a driving force. They occur in a wide variety of fields ranging from optics, hydrodynamics to chemistry and biology. Recently, significant interest has focused on their temporal realization in driven optical microresonators, known as dissipative Kerr solitons. They provide access to coherent, chip-scale optical frequency combs, which have already been employed in optical metrology, data communication and spectroscopy. Such Kerr resonator systems can …
Generating energetic femtosecond mid-IR pulses is crucial for ultrafast spectroscopy, and currently relies on parametric processes that, while efficient, are also complex. Here we experimentally show a simple alternative that uses a single pump wavelength without any pump synchronization and without critical phase-matching requirements. Pumping a bulk quadratic nonlinear crystal (unpoled LiNbO$_3$ cut for noncritical phase-mismatched interaction) with sub-mJ near-IR 50-fs pulses, tunable and broadband ($\sim 1,000$ cm$^{-1}$) mid-IR pulses around $3.0~μ\rm m$ are generated with excellent spati…
We report results of a systematic numerical analysis of interactions between three-dimensional (3D) fundamental solitons, performed in the framework of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) with the cubic-quintic (CQ) nonlinearity, combining the self-focusing and defocusing terms. The 3D NLSE with the CQ terms may be realized in terms of spatiotemporal propagation of light in nonlinear optical media, and in Bose-Einstein condensates, provided that losses may be neglected. The first part of the work addresses interactions between identical fundamental solitons, with phase shift $% φ$ betwee…
In this work, we unveil the unique complex dynamics of multimode soliton interactions in graded-index optical fibers through simulations and experiments. By generating two multimode solitons from the fission of an input femtosecond pulse, we examine the evolution of their Raman-induced red-shift when the input pulse energy grows larger. Remarkably, we find that the output red-shift of the trailing multimode soliton may be reduced, so that it accelerates until it collides with the leading multimode soliton. As a result of the inelastic collision, a significant energy transfer occurs between the…
The red shifted solitonic resonant radiation is a fascinating phase matching phenomenon that occurs when an optical pulse, launched in the normal dispersion regime of photonic crystal fiber, radiates across the zero dispersion wavelength. The formation of such phase-matched radiation is independent of the generation of any optical soliton and mainly governed by the leading edge of input pump which forms a shock front. The radiation is generated at the anomalous dispersion regime and found to be confined both in time and frequency domain. We experimentally investigate the formation of such radi…
Thermal noise usually dominates the low-frequency region of the optical phase noise of soliton microcombs, leading to decoherence and limiting many aspects of applications. In this work, we demonstrate a simple and reliable way to mitigate this noise by laser cooling with the pump laser. The key is rendering the pump laser to simultaneously excite two neighboring cavity modes from different families that are respectively red and blue detuned, one for soliton generation and the other one for laser cooling.
We introduce a new form of stable spatio-temporal self-trapped optical packets stemming from the interplay of local and nonlocal nonlinearities. Pulsed self-trapped light beams in media with both electronic and molecular nonlinear responses are addressed to prove that spatial and temporal effects can be decoupled, allowing for independent tuning. We numerically demonstrate that (3+1)D light bullets and anti-bullets, i. e. bright and dark temporal solitons embedded in stable (2+1)D nonlocal spatial solitons, can be generated in reorientational media under experimentally feasible conditions.