Real-time dynamics of soliton triplets in fiber lasers

Abstract

The evolution of soliton molecules emphasizes the complex soliton dynamics akin to matter molecules. Beyond the simplest soliton molecule—a soliton pair constituted by two bound pulses—soliton molecules with more constituents have more degrees of freedom because of the temporal pulse separations and relative phases. Here we detailedly characterize the transient dynamics of soliton triplets in fiber lasers by using the dispersive Fourier transform measurement. A particular form of leading, central, and tailing pulses is constructed to shed new light on more intriguing scenarios and fuel the molecular analogy. Especially the vibrating dynamics of the central and tailing pulses are captured near the regime of equally spaced soliton triplets, which is reminiscent of the recurrent timing jitters within multi-pulse structures. Further insights enable access into a universal form of unequally spaced soliton triplets interpreted as 2 + 1 soliton molecules. Different binding strengths of intramolecular and intermolecular bonds are validated with respect to the diverse internal motions involved in this soliton triplet molecule. All these findings unveil the transient dynamics with more degrees of freedom as well as highlight the possible application for all-optical bit storage.

Recent progress of dynamic mode manipulation via acousto-optic interactions in few-mode fiber lasers: mechanism, device and applications

“…Conventional PDs are incapable of capturing ultrafast dynamic process with high resolution and sensitivity due to the restrictions of (1) the narrow electric-bandwidths; (2) the time for reading out the data from sensor arrays and (3) the fundamental compromise between sensitivity and frame rate [203]. The recently developed time-stretched dispersion Fourier transform (TS-DFT) method provides an elegant way for exploring the ultrafast dynamics [204][205][206][207][208][209][210][211][212][213][214][215][216][217][218][219], as shown in Table 2.…”

Comparing Performance of Deep Convolution Networks in Reconstructing Soliton Molecules Dynamics from Real-Time Spectral Interference

“…The potential of soliton molecules to expand the transmission capacity in optical communication systems has drawn much research attention and has become an attractive topic for nonlinear optical fibers in recent decades [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. In addition to predicting the dynamic evolution of soliton molecules theoretically [3], the dynamic evolution of soliton molecules is also proved experimentally [8][9][10][11][12], which extends the degrees of freedom toward internal dynamics. The internal dynamics of soliton molecules is difficult to analyze when only the change of the pulse energy is considered in the oscilloscope traces.…”

“…It appears tremendous potential in simulating dynamic process of various complex molecules. The structure of soliton molecules encompasses simple two-soliton and three-soliton molecules [4,5,[10][11][12], 2+2 soliton molecular complexes [9], composite patterns in both global and local ranges [14], and supramolecular arrangements that mimic various manybody biochemical and biological systems [8]. To restructure the internal dynamics of the soliton molecules from TS-DFT spectra, a autocorrelation method is usually employed [9].…”

“…However, the autocorrelation method cannot further quantitatively analyze all the dynamic evolution processes in complex molecular structures, such as relative phase of each soliton. When multisoliton molecules and soliton pairs with near equal spacing happen [11], it is almost impossible to obtain relative phase differences (PDs) evolution [17]. Therefore, the autocorrelation method is suitable for analyzing simple soliton molecule structures consisting of soliton pairs, unequally spacing three solitons [4], etc.…”

Superlocalization reveals long-range synchronization of vibrating soliton molecules

“…Thus, experiments investigate now soliton molecule dynamics for a larger number of interacting solitons. In a significant number of cases, solitons are not distributed evenly in a regular train of pulses, but form a supra-molecule or molecular complex composed of several, often identical, molecules [10,12,13]. This raises the open question of the interplay between the mechanisms responsible for the dynamics governing each molecule, and for the macro organization of the molecular complexes.…”