Dynamical diversity of pulsating solitons in a fiber laser

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.

Breather Molecular Complexes in a Passively Mode‐Locked Fiber Laser

“…Although breathers are fundamentally different from stationary solitons, they appear to exhibit similar collective dynamics. The experimental generation of breather-pair molecules in a fibre laser cavity has been reported on a few recent occasions [15,25,26]. The emphasis of the present article is on pushing the similarity in collective behavior between breathing and stationary solitons further.…”

“…A potential minimum can be induced by dissipative effects only, thus enabling the formation of multi-pulse bound states. A number of recent works have reported on the observation of breathing soliton-pair molecules in mode-locked fibre lasers [15,25,26]. It is worth mentioning that besides the formation of breather molecules, various notable dynamics of dissipative localized structures have been experimentally studied in mode-locked lasers, including soliton and breather explosions [27][28][29][30][31] and rogue wave generation [32].…”

Dynamics of carbon nanotube-based mode-locking fiber lasers

“…In the other way, the fundamental soliton in mode-locked fiber lasers becomes unstable when increasing the pump power, complex soliton operation regimes can be observed. In CNT-SA mode-locked fiber lasers, soliton operation and dynamics, such as the HML, soliton molecule [74,80,81,177], vector solitons [83,84], dark soliton [85], soliton explosion [178,179], pulsation [180,181], and soliton rains [86,87] have been revealed. Here, we emphasis the dark soliton and soliton rains in CNT-SA mode-locked fiber lasers, others will be discussed in combination with the realtime observations in detail in Section 4.…”

“…More recently, Xu et al revealed the distinct dynamical diversity of pulsating solitons in a fiber laser by using hybrid mode-locking based on NPR and CNT-SA [180], as shown in Figure 16(A)-(B). In particular, the weak to strong explosive behaviors of pulsating solitons, as well as the rogue wave generation during explosions were observed.…”

“…A typical feature of a soliton explosion is that a quasi-stationary pulse suddenly experiences a structural collapse as it travels back and forth through the cavity, but after a sustained period of Figure 16: Various steady-state dynamics of soliton. (A) Single-shot spectra and corresponding energy evolution dynamics of single-soliton pulsation; (B) Single-shot spectra evolution of single-soliton pulsation; Xu et al [180]. © Optical Society of America 2019.…”