Abstract
Soliton fusion is a fascinating and delicate phenomenon that manifests itself in optical fibers in case of interaction between co-propagating solitons with small temporal and wavelengths separation. The mechanism of graduate acceleration of trailing soliton by dispersive waves radiated from the preceding one provides necessary conditions for soliton fusion at the advanced stage of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers. As a result large intensity robust light structures can propagate over significant distances. In the spectral domain fusion-like processes result in development of a new significant band at the long wavelength side of the spectrum.
Highlights
A fascinating process of short laser pulses conversion into light with broad continuous spectra by various nonlinear optical processes, known as the supercontinuum (SC) generation, has attracted a lot of scientific attention over the past few decades
The mechanism of graduate acceleration of trailing soliton by dispersive waves radiated from the preceding one provides necessary conditions for soliton fusion at the advanced stage of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fibers
The supercontinuum does not originate from a specific single phenomenon but rather from a plethora of nonlinear effects, such as self-phase modulation (SPM), high order soliton fission, modulation instability, stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), self-steepening (SS), four wave mixing, which combine to produce an extreme pulse broadening, with the widest and most homogeneous SC spectrum obtained when the pump pulses are launched close to the zero-dispersion wavelength and in the anomalous regime [3]
Summary
A fascinating process of short laser pulses conversion into light with broad continuous spectra by various nonlinear optical processes, known as the supercontinuum (SC) generation, has attracted a lot of scientific attention over the past few decades. In the spectral region of long wavelengths where the dispersion is anomalous, solitons play a major role in the SC formation process [11]. They influence pulse spectral broadening at the initial stage of SC formation via a fission process [3,12] and at later stages via their interaction with dispersive waves by means of Kerr and Raman nonlinearities [11,13,14]. The aim of the present work is to demonstrate an effective fusion-like processes [15] resultant from multiple interactions both between solitons and dispersive waves and between adjacent solitons at the advanced stage of SC formation. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Theoretical description of the model studied, experimental observations and comparison of experimental data with numerical simulations, main results, conclusions
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