Envelope and Hole Solitons in an Experimental Transmission Line

Abstract

The propagation of modulated waves, such as bright envelope solitons or hole solitons, have been the subject of considerable interest1–3 for many years. This is the case especially in nonlinear optics, where important recent progress about fiber loss4 allows the improvement of practical results in the future. On another hand, electrical transmission lines provide a useful way5–7 to simulate analogically what happens during the transmission of the waves, namely by use of an oscilloscope probe at each cell of the line. The electrical transmission line we present in section 2 has a S-shaped dispersion curve and, concerning the modulational instability, the frequency band can be divided in three different regions, according to a theoretical approach based on a Nonlinear Schrodinger equation. This prediction, associated with the existence of either bright or hole modulated waves, is then confirmed by our experimental results in section 3.