Pure-quartic solitons

Temporal optical solitons have been the subject of intense research due to their intriguing physics and applications in ultrafast optics and supercontinuum generation. Conventional bright optical solitons result from the interaction of anomalous group-velocity dispersion and self-phase modulation. Here we experimentally demonstrate a class of bright soliton arising purely from the interaction of negative fourth-order dispersion and self-phase modulation, which can occur even for normal group-velocity dispersion. We provide experimental and numerical evidence of shape-preserving propagation and flat temporal phase for the fundamental pure-quartic soliton and periodically modulated propagation for the higher-order pure-quartic solitons. We derive the approximate shape of the fundamental pure-quartic soliton and discover that is surprisingly Gaussian, exhibiting excellent agreement with our experimental observations. Our discovery, enabled by precise dispersion engineering, could find applications in communications, frequency combs and ultrafast lasers

The Influence of CO₂ Admixtures on the Product Composition in a Nitrogen-Methane Atmospheric Glow Discharge Used as a Prebiotic Atmosphere Mimic

This work extends our previous experimental studies of the chemistry of Titan’s atmosphere by atmospheric glow discharge. The Titan’s atmosphere seems to be similarly to early Earth atmospheric composition. The exploration of Titan atmosphere was initiated by the exciting results of the Cassini-Huygens mission and obtained results increased the interest about prebiotic atmospheres. Present work is devoted to the role of CO2 in the prebiotic atmosphere chemistry. Most of the laboratory studies of such atmosphere were focused on the chemistry of N2 + CH4 mixtures. The present work is devoted to the study of the oxygenated volatile species in prebiotic atmosphere, specifically CO2 reactivity. CO2 was introduced to the standard N2 + CH4 mixture at different mixing ratio up to 5 % CH4 and 3 % CO2. The reaction products were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy. This work shows that CO2 modifies the composition of the gas phase with the detection of oxygenated compounds: CO and others oxides. There is a strong influence of CO2 on increasing concentration other products as cyanide (HCN) and ammonia (NH3)