Soliton Molecules and Multisoliton States in Ultrafast Fibre Lasers: Intrinsic Complexes in Dissipative Systems

Benefiting from ultrafast temporal resolution, broadband spectral bandwidth, as well as high peak power, passively mode-locked fibre lasers have attracted growing interest and exhibited great potential from fundamental sciences to industrial and military applications. As a nonlinear system containing complex interactions from gain, loss, nonlinearity, dispersion, etc., ultrafast fibre lasers deliver not only conventional single soliton but also soliton bunching with different types. In analogy to molecules consisting of several atoms in chemistry, soliton molecules (in other words, bound solitons) in fibre lasers are of vital importance for in-depth understanding of the nonlinear interaction mechanism and further exploration for high-capacity fibre-optic communications. In this Review, we summarize the state-of-the-art advances on soliton molecules in ultrafast fibre lasers. A variety of soliton molecules with different numbers of soliton, phase-differences and pulse separations were experimentally observed owing to the flexibility of parameters such as mode-locking techniques and dispersion control. Numerical simulations clearly unravel how different nonlinear interactions contribute to formation of soliton molecules. Analysis of the stability and the underlying physical mechanisms of bound solitons bring important insights to this field. For a complete view of nonlinear optical phenomena in fibre lasers, other dissipative states such as vibrating soliton pairs, soliton rains, rogue waves and coexisting dissipative solitons are also discussed. With development of advanced real-time detection techniques, the internal motion of different pulsing states is anticipated to be characterized, rendering fibre lasers a versatile platform for nonlinear complex dynamics and various practical applications

Observation of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou Recurrence and Its Exact Dynamics

One of the most controversial phenomena in nonlinear dynamics is the reappearance of initial conditions. Celebrated as the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou problem, the attempt to understand how these recurrences form during the complex evolution that leads to equilibrium has deeply influenced the entire development of nonlinear science. The enigma is rendered even more intriguing by the fact that integrable models predict recurrence as exact solutions, but the difficulties involved in upholding integrability for a sufficiently long dynamic has not allowed a quantitative experimental validation. In natural processes, coupling with the environment rapidly leads to thermalization, and finding nonlinear multimodal systems presenting multiple returns is a long-standing open challenge. Here, we report the observation of more than three Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou recurrences for nonlinear optical spatial waves and demonstrate the control of the recurrent behavior through the phase and amplitude of the initial field. The recurrence period and phase shift are found to be in remarkable agreement with the exact recurrent solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, while the recurrent behavior disappears as integrability is lost. These results identify the origin of the recurrence in the integrability of the underlying dynamics and allow us to achieve one of the basic aspirations of nonlinear dynamics: the reconstruction, after several return cycles, of the exact initial condition of the system, ultimately proving that the complex evolution can be accurately predicted in experimental conditions

High-order rogue waves of a long-wave–short-wave model of Newell type

The long-wave–short-wave (LWSW) model of Newell type is an integrable model describing the interaction between the gravity wave (long wave) and the capillary wave (short wave) for the surface wave of deep water under certain resonance conditions. In the present paper, we are concerned with rogue-wave solutions to the LWSW model of Newell type. By combining the Hirota’s bilinear method and the KP hierarchy reduction, we construct its general rational solution expressed by the determinant. It is found that the fundamental rogue wave for the short wave can be classified into three different patterns: bright, intermediate, and dark states, whereas the one for the long wave is always a bright state. The higher-order rogue wave corresponds to the superposition of fundamental ones. The modulation instability analysis shows that the condition of the baseband modulation instability where an unstable continuous-wave background corresponds to perturbations with infinitesimally small frequencies, coincides with the condition for the existence of rogue-wave solutions

Generalized integrable evolution equations with an infinite number of free parameters

Evolution equations such as the nonliear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) can be extended to include an infinite number of free parameters. The extensions are not unique. We give two examples that contain the NLSE as the lowest-order PDE of each set. Such representations provide the advantage of modelling a larger variety of physical problems due to the presence of an infinite number of higher-order terms in this equation with an infinite number of arbitrary parameters. An example of a rogue wave solution for one of these cases is presented, demonstrating the power of the technique

Dual polarization nonlinear Fourier transform-based optical communication system

New services and applications are causing an exponential increase in internet traffic. In a few years, current fiber optic communication system infrastructure will not be able to meet this demand because fiber nonlinearity dramatically limits the information transmission rate. Eigenvalue communication could potentially overcome these limitations. It relies on a mathematical technique called "nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT)" to exploit the "hidden" linearity of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation as the master model for signal propagation in an optical fiber. We present here the theoretical tools describing the NFT for the Manakov system and report on experimental transmission results for dual polarization in fiber optic eigenvalue communications. A transmission of up to 373.5 km with bit error rate less than the hard-decision forward error correction threshold has been achieved. Our results demonstrate that dual-polarization NFT can work in practice and enable an increased spectral efficiency in NFT-based communication systems, which are currently based on single polarization channels

Generalized integrable evolution equations with an infinite number of free parameters

Evolution equations such as the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) can be extended to include an infinite number of free parameters. The extensions are not unique. We give two examples that contain the NLSE as the lowest-order PDE of each set. Such representations provide the advantage of modelling a larger variety of physical problems due to the presence of an infinite number of higher-order terms in this equation with an infinite number of arbitrary parameters. An example of a rogue wave solution for one of these cases is presented, demonstrating the power of the technique

Soliton Molecules and Multisoliton States in Ultrafast Fibre Lasers: Intrinsic Complexes in Dissipative Systems

Benefiting from ultrafast temporal resolution, broadband spectral bandwidth, as well as high peak power, passively mode-locked fibre lasers have attracted growing interest and exhibited great potential from fundamental sciences to industrial and military applications. As a nonlinear system containing complex interactions from gain, loss, nonlinearity, dispersion, etc., ultrafast fibre lasers deliver not only conventional single soliton but also soliton bunching with different types. In analogy to molecules consisting of several atoms in chemistry, soliton molecules (in other words, bound solitons) in fibre lasers are of vital importance for in-depth understanding of the nonlinear interaction mechanism and further exploration for high-capacity fibre-optic communications. In this Review, we summarize the state-of-the-art advances on soliton molecules in ultrafast fibre lasers. A variety of soliton molecules with different numbers of soliton, phase-differences and pulse separations were experimentally observed owing to the flexibility of parameters such as mode-locking techniques and dispersion control. Numerical simulations clearly unravel how different nonlinear interactions contribute to formation of soliton molecules. Analysis of the stability and the underlying physical mechanisms of bound solitons bring important insights to this field. For a complete view of nonlinear optical phenomena in fibre lasers, other dissipative states such as vibrating soliton pairs, soliton rains, rogue waves and coexisting dissipative solitons are also discussed. With development of advanced real-time detection techniques, the internal motion of different pulsing states is anticipated to be characterized, rendering fibre lasers a versatile platform for nonlinear complex dynamics and various practical applications

Sasa--Satsuma hierarchy of integrable evolution equations

We present the infinite hierarchy of Sasa-Satsuma evolution equations. The corresponding Lax pairs are given, thus proving its integrability. The lowest order member of this hierarchy is the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, while the next one is the Sasa-Satsuma equation that includes third-order terms. Up to sixth- order terms of the hierarchy are given in explicit form, while the provided recurrence relation allows one to explicitly write all higher-order terms. The whole hierarchy can be combined into a single general equation. Each term in this equation contains a real independent coefficient that provides the possibility of adapting the equation to practical needs. A few examples of exact solutions of this general equation with an infinite number of terms are also given explicitly

Breathers and solitons of generalized nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations as degenerations of algebro-geometric solutions

We present new solutions in terms of elementary functions of the multi-component nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations and known solutions of the Davey-Stewartson equations such as multi-soliton, breather, dromion and lump solutions. These solutions are given in a simple determinantal form and are obtained as limiting cases in suitable degenerations of previously derived algebro-geometric solutions. In particular we present for the first time breather and rational breather solutions of the multi-component nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations