We report the first experimental observation of three-dimensional light bullets, excited by femtosecond pulses in a system featuring quasi-instantaneous cubic nonlinearity and a periodic, transversally modulated refractive index. Stringent evidence of the excitation of light bullets is based on time-gated images and spectra which perfectly match our numerical simulations. Furthermore, we reveal a novel evolution mechanism forcing the light bullets to follow varying dispersion or diffraction conditions, until they leave their existence range and decay.

We experimentally investigate light propagation in a disordered two-dimensional array of mutually coupled optical fibers. In the linear case light either spreads in a diffusive manner or localizes at a few sites. For high excitation power diffusive spreading is arrested by the focusing nonlinearity, i.e., forming a discrete soliton. By contrast, fields, which are localized in the linear regime, can experience both spreading and contraction caused by the nonlinearity.

The discovery of optical solitons being understood as temporally and spectrally stationary optical states has enabled numerous innovations among which, most notably, supercontinuum light sources have become widely used in both fundamental and applied sciences. Here, we report on experimental evidence for dynamics of hybrid solitons—a new type of solitary wave, which emerges as a result of a strong non-instantaneous nonlinear response in CS2-filled liquid-core optical fibres. Octave-spanning supercontinua in the mid-infrared region are observed when pumping the hybrid waveguide with a 460 fs laser (1.95 μm) in the anomalous dispersion regime at nanojoule-level pulse energies. A detailed numerical analysis well correlated with the experiment uncovers clear indicators of emerging hybrid solitons, revealing their impact on the bandwidth, onset energy and noise characteristics of the supercontinua. Our study highlights liquid-core fibres as a promising platform for fundamental optics and applications towards novel coherent and reconfigurable light sources.

Ultrafast supercontinuum generation in gas-filled waveguides is an enabling technology for many intriguing applications ranging from attosecond metrology towards biophotonics, with the amount of spectral broadening crucially depending on the pulse dispersion of the propagating mode. In this study, we show that structural resonances in a gas-filled antiresonant hollow core optical fiber provide an additional degree of freedom in dispersion engineering, which enables the generation of more than three octaves of broadband light that ranges from deep UV wavelengths to near infrared. Our observation relies on the introduction of a geometric-induced resonance in the spectral vicinity of the ultrafast pump laser, outperforming gas dispersion and yielding a unique dispersion profile independent of core size, which is highly relevant for scaling input powers. Using a krypton-filled fiber, we observe spectral broadening from 200 nm to 1.7 μm at an output energy of ∼ 23 μJ within a single optical mode across the entire spectral bandwidth. Simulations show that the frequency generation results from an accelerated fission process of soliton-like waveforms in a non-adiabatic dispersion regime associated with the emission of multiple phase-matched Cherenkov radiations on both sides of the resonance. This effect, along with the dispersion tuning and scaling capabilities of the fiber geometry, enables coherent ultra-broadband and high-energy sources, which range from the UV to the mid‐infrared spectral range.

The optical Vernier effect provides magnification of the sensing capabilities of an interferometer, allowing unprecedented sensitivities and resolutions to be achieved. Just like a calliper uses two different scales to achieve higher resolution measurements, the optical Vernier effect is based on the overlap between the responses of two interferometers with slightly detuned interference signals. Here we present in detail, as a novel approach, the generation of optical harmonics of the Vernier effect with Fabry-Perot interferometers, where the two interferometers can have very different frequencies in the interferometric pattern. We demonstrate not only a considerable enhancement, but also a better control of the sensitivity magnification factor, which scales up with the order of the harmonics, breaking the limits of the conventional Vernier effect as used today. In addition, this novel concept opens also new ways of dimensioning the sensing structures, together with improved fabrication tolerances.

We report the first experimental observation of vortex light bullets that are discrete, spatiotemporal, solitary waves with orbital angular momentum. We analyze conditions for their existence and investigate their rich properties and dynamics. Vortex light bullets are excited in fiber arrays with spatially shaped femtosecond pulses and analyzed with a spatiotemporal cross correlator. Most importantly, we find that they have entirely new stability properties, being robust against considerable degrees of perturbation in a limited range of energies. All experimental findings are backed up by rigorous simulations, giving further insight into the rich dynamics of vortex light bullets.

We report on soliton-fission mediated infrared supercontinuum generation in liquid-core step-index fibers using highly transparent carbon chlorides (CCl, CCl). By developing models for the refractive index dispersions and nonlinear response functions, dispersion engineering and pumping with an ultrafast thulium fiber laser (300 fs) at 1.92 μm, distinct soliton fission and dispersive wave generation was observed, particularly in the case of tetrachloroethylene (CCl). The measured results match simulations of both the generalized and a hybrid nonlinear Schrödinger equation, with the latter resembling the characteristics of non-instantaneous medium via a static potential term and representing a simulation tool with substantially reduced complexity. We show that CCl has the potential for observing non-instantaneous soliton dynamics along meters of liquid-core fiber opening a feasible route for directly observing hybrid soliton dynamics.

Tracking and analyzing the individual diffusion of nanoscale objects such as proteins and viruses is an important methodology in life science. Here, we show a sensor that combines the efficiency of light line illumination with the advantages of fluidic confinement. Tracking of freely diffusing nano-objects inside water-filled hollow core fibers with core diameters of tens of micrometers using elastically scattered light from the core mode allows retrieving information about the Brownian motion and the size of each particle of the investigated ensemble individually using standard tracking algorithms and the mean squared displacement analysis. Specifically, we successfully measure the diameter of every gold nanosphere in an ensemble that consists of several hundreds of 40 nm particles, with an individual precision below 17% (±8 nm). In addition, we confirm the relevance of our approach with respect to bioanalytics by analyzing 70 nm λ-phages. Overall these features, together with the strongly reduced demand for memory space, principally allows us to record thousands of frames and to achieve high frame rates for high precision tracking of nanoscale objects.