Analysis of the interplay between soliton fission and modulation instability in supercontinuum generation

We investigate the generation mechanisms for ultrawide spectra in nonlinear optical fibers. Soliton fission and modulation instability represent fundamental mechanisms for the generation process. The primary origin of the spectral broadening changes with the pump-pulse duration. Soliton fission dominates for low input power and short pulses. Its efficiency for supercontinuum generation and especially the extend to the blue side can be increased by proper design of the dispersion profile. The modulation instability has a strong impact for high input powers and greatly enhances the generation process, but leads to a degradation of the coherence properties. Also for short pulses with durations of 60 fs the modulation instability is present and can hardly be suppressed. The interplay between these two effects leads to various characteristics of the resulting spectra, which are modified by to the relative impact of the modulation instability

Supercontinuum generation by the modelation instability

We report on a numerical study of supercontinuum generation in a single-mode optical fiber by the modulation instability. An ultrabroadband octave-spanning continuum is generated for femtosecond pulses with subkilowatt peak power. In particular, we investigate the influence of higher-order effects such as third- and fourth-order dispersion, self-steepening and intrapulse Raman scattering on the supercontinuum generation

Solitons on a background, rogue waves and classical soliton solutions of Sasa--Satsuma equation

We present the most general multi-parameter family of a soliton on a background solutions to the Sasa-Satsuma equation. The solution contains a set of several free parameters that control the background amplitude as well as the soliton itself. This family of solutions admits nontrivial limiting cases, such as rogue waves and classical solitons, that are considered in detail

Limit for pulse compression by pulse splitting

We have detected a fundamental pulse-compression limit for high-nonlinear fibers in the normal dispersion regime near the zero-dispersion wavelength. The desired generation of a broadband continuum by self-phase modulation is limited by already small amounts of third-order dispersion, which results in pulse splitting above a critical pulse power. We investigate the critical fiber length in dependence on pulse- and fiber parameters

Sasa--Satsuma equation: Soliton on a background and its limiting cases

We present a multi-parameter family of a soliton on a background solutions to the Sasa-Satsuma equation. The solution is controlled by a set of several free parameters that control the background amplitude as well as the soliton itself. This family of solutions admits a few nontrivial limiting cases that are considered in detail. Among these special cases is the NLSE limit and the limit of rogue wave solutions

Unusual ways of four-wave mixing instability

A pump carrier wave in a dispersive system may decay by giving birth to blue- and red-shifted satellite waves due to modulation or four-wave mixing instability. We analyse situations where the satellites are so different from the carrier wave, that the red-shifted satellite either changes its propagation direction (k 0) or even gets a negative frequency (k, ω < 0). Both situations are beyond the envelope approach and require application of Maxwell equations

Sasa-Satsuma equation: Soliton on a background and its limiting cases

We present a multi-parameter family of a soliton on a background solutions to the Sasa-Satsuma equation. The solution is controlled by a set of several free parameters that control the background amplitude as well as the soliton itself. This family of solutions admits a few nontrivial limiting cases that are considered in detail. Among these special cases is the NLSE limit and the limit of rogue wave solution

Asymptotically stable compensation of soliton self-frequency shift

We report the cancellation of the soliton self-frequency shift in nonlinear optical fibers. A soliton which interacts with a group velocity matched low intensity dispersive pump pulse, experiences a continuous blue-shift in frequency, which counteracts the soliton selffrequency shift due to Raman scattering. The soliton self-frequency shift can be fully compensated by a suitably prepared dispersive wave.We quantify this kind of soliton-dispersive wave interaction by an adiabatic approach and demonstrate that the compensation is stable in agreement with numerical simulations

Calculation of ultrashort pulse propagation based on rational approximations for medium dispersion

Ultrashort optical pulses contain only a few optical cycles and exhibit broad spectra. Their carrier frequency is therefore not well defined and their description in terms of the standard slowly varying envelope approximation becomes questionable. Existing modeling approaches can be divided in two classes, namely generalized envelope equations, that stem from the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and non-envelope equations which treat the field directly. Based on fundamental physical rules we will present an approach that effectively interpolates between these classes and provides a suitable setting for accurate and highly efficient numerical treatment of pulse propagation along nonlinear and dispersive optical media

Spectral properties of limiting solitons in optical fibers

It seems to be self-evident that stable optical pulses cannot be considerably shorter than a single oscillation of the carrier field. From the mathematical point of view the solitary solutions of pulse propagation equations should loose stability or demonstrate some kind of singular behavior. Typically, an unphysical cusp develops at the soliton top, preventing the soliton from being too short. Consequently, the power spectrum of the limiting solution has a special behavior: the standard exponential decay is replaced by an algebraic one. We derive the shortest soliton and explicitly calculate its spectrum for the so-called short pulse equation. The latter applies to ultra-short solitons in transparent materials like fused silica that are relevant for optical fibers