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Solitons and coherent structures in optics:50th anniversary of the prediction of optical solitons in fiber
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Fifty years ago, the concept of solitons in optical fibres was proposed numerically by F. Tappert and A. Hasegawa from Bell Labs. Seven years later in 1980, experiments confirmed that dispersion and the Kerr nonlinearity could combine to yield a coherent ultrashort pulse able to propagate without distortion. The implications of this discovery go well beyond the sector of telecommunications as initially suggested, and solitons now play a major role in modern ultrafast nonlinear photonics.
This paper reviews the discovery of the optical soliton and historical attempts of its applications in ultra-high-speed communications. It also reveals various episodes that took place in the course of its discovery and in subsequent developments in the form of a memoir. The paper is expected to stimulate young scientists for their future activities and contributions.
Nonlinear systems with two competing frequencies show locking or resonances. In lasers, the two interacting frequencies can be the cavity repetition rate and a frequency externally applied to the system. Conversely, the excitation of breather oscillations in lasers naturally triggers a second characteristic frequency in the system, therefore showing competition between the cavity repetition rate and the breathing frequency. Yet, the link between breathing solitons and frequency locking is missing. Here we demonstrate frequency locking at Farey fractions of a breather laser. The winding numbers exhibit the hierarchy of the Farey tree and the structure of a devil’s staircase. Numerical simulations of a discrete laser model confirm the experimental findings. The breather laser may therefore serve as a simple test bed to explore ubiquitous synchronization dynamics of nonlinear systems. The locked breathing frequencies feature a high signal-to-noise ratio and can give rise to dense radio-frequency combs, which are attractive for applications. Fractal optical solitons were studied in theory while it is cumbersome their experimental realization in optics setups. Here, the authors find that breathing solitons in lasers constitute fractals―the devil’s staircases, which are around 3000 times more stable than classical ones.
The need to measure high repetition rate ultrafast processes cuts across multiple areas of science. The last decade has seen tremendous advances in the development and application of new techniques in this field, as well as many breakthrough achievements analyzing non-repetitive optical phenomena. Several approaches now provide convenient access to single-shot optical waveform characterization, including the dispersive Fourier transform (DFT) and time-lens techniques, which yield real-time ultrafast characterization in the spectral and temporal domains, respectively. These complementary approaches have already proven to be highly successful to gain insight into numerous optical phenomena including the emergence of extreme events and characterizing the complexity of laser evolution dynamics. However, beyond the study of these fundamental processes, real-time measurements have also been driven by particular applications ranging from spectroscopy to velocimetry, while shedding new light in areas spanning ultrafast imaging, metrology or even quantum science. Here, we review a number of landmark results obtained using DFT-based technologies, including several recent advances and key selected applications.
Recent years have seen the rapid growth and development of the field of smart photonics, where machine-learning algorithms are being matched to optical systems to add new functionalities and to enhance performance. An area where machine learning shows particular potential to accelerate technology is the field of ultrafast photonics — the generation and characterization of light pulses, the study of light–matter interactions on short timescales, and high-speed optical measurements. Our aim here is to highlight a number of specific areas where the promise of machine learning in ultrafast photonics has already been realized, including the design and operation of pulsed lasers, and the characterization and control of ultrafast propagation dynamics. We also consider challenges and future areas of research. The potential of machine-learning application to the field of ultrafast photonics is reviewed, with key examples including pulsed lasers, and control and characterization of ultrafast propagation dynamics.
Optical fibers, long an enabling technology for telecommunications, are proving to play a central role in a growing number of modern applications, starting from high speed broad band internet to medical surgery and entering across the entire spectrum of scientific, military, industrial and commercial applications. Specialty optical fibers either special waveguide structure or novel material composition becomes heart of all fiber based advanced photonics devices and components. This rapidly evolving field calls on the expertise and skills of a broad set of different disciplines: materials science, ceramic engineering, optics, electrical engineering, physics, polymer chemistry, and several others. This roadmap on specialty optical fibers addresses different technologies and application areas. It is constituted by fourteen contributions authored by world-leading experts, providing insight into the current state-of-the-art and the challenges their respective fields face. Some articles address the area of multimode fibers, including the nonlinear effects occurring in them. Several other articles are dedicated to doped, plastic, and soft-glass fibers. Large mode area fibers, hollow-core fibers, and nanostructured fibers are also described in different sections. The use of some of such fibers for optical amplification and to realize several kinds of optical sources - including lasers, single photon sources and supercontinuum sources - is described in some other sections. Different approaches to satisfy applications at visible, infrared and THz spectra regions are also discussed. Throughout the roadmap there is an attempt to foresee and to suggest future directions in this particularly dynamic area of optical fiber technology.
Dissipative solitons are well known as representative nonlinear localized wave packets resulting from the composite balance of dispersion, nonlinearity, gain and loss in optical cavities. Since the last three decades, dissipative solitons keep as one of the most active research topics in the framework of nonlinear physics, not only for fundamental researches but also for various industrial applications. From one hand, due to the rich nonlinear dynamics, dissipative solitons have been considered as an ideal testbed to study the pumping-dissipation-bifurcation complexities. On the other hand, the emergences of dissipative solitons are tightly linked with the emission of ultrashort laser pulses, as well as the formation of broadband optical frequency combs. Compared with single-soliton counterpart, the multi-component dissipative solitons have exhibited even more fascinating properties and much wider range of applications, therefore the coupling dynamics of dissipative solitons is the blooming and emergent research area in the last decade. From this point of view, this review article covers the latest developments of compound dissipative solitons, not only in passive Kerr resonators, but also in mode-locked laser cavities. Ranging from polarized vector solitons to soliton molecules, the rising degree of freedom of these multi-component localized structures is boosting the discovery of novel nonlinear dynamics and underpin the various photonic applications in light science.
We report results of systematic numerical analysis for multiple soliton generation by means of the recently reported multiple temporal compression (MTC) method, and compare its efficiency with conventional methods based on the use of photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) and fused silica waveguides (FSWs). The results show that the MTC method is more efficient to control the soliton fission, giving rise to a larger number of fundamental solitons with high powers, that remain nearly constant over long propagation distances. The high efficiency of the MTC method is demonstrated, in particular, in terms of multiple soliton collisions and the Newton’s-cradle phenomenology.
The study of temporal solitons has revolutionized fiber optics, yielded new classes of ultrafast laser and opened multiple interdisciplinary applications.
Due to the quantization of the pulse energy in fiber lasers, it is challenging to find effective ways to increase the pulse energy directly from a fiber laser oscillator. One efficient and promising technique is based on the dissipative soliton resonance (DSR) effect which is a special solution of the nonlinear propagation equation manifesting as a square-wave pulse with a constant peak power and increasing pulse energy and duration when the pumping power increases. Experimentally, DSR is favored with the use of long or ultra-long cavities and has been observed in many optical configurations with various rare-earth doped fibers. In this paper we give a comprehensive review of the DSR in fiber lasers. Theoretical background is considered as well as the most relevant experimental results.
