Manipulation of Gaussian derivative pulses and vector solitons in fiber lasers with analytic modeling by the coupled complex Ginzburg–Landau equations

Abstract

Both positive- and negative-polarity Gaussian monocycle and doublet pulses, for which the pulse shapes are the first and second derivatives of Gaussian functions plus some continuous-wave backgrounds respectively, are generated in a ring-cavity erbium-doped fiber laser from polarization-locked vector solitons by using passive optical technology. The pulse states are switchable and are found to be the superposition of bright and dark solitons with different widths, amplitudes, time delays, polarizations, and wavelengths. Qualitative analysis of the properties of vector solitons are performed by solving coupled complex Ginzburg–Landau equations, and analytic modeling of the fiber laser is presented. By representing the envelopes of bright soliton by sech- and dark soliton by tanh-based functions, the incoherent superposition of these two soliton components have simulated the experimental observations, and the underlying mechanisms for the formation of monocycle and doublet pulses are attributed to the polarization locking of bright and dark solitons. The theoretical modeling is used to calculate the pulse parameters of the fiber laser, and the intracavity birefringence can be estimated. The results of tunable optical vector solitons are compared with atomic solitons in the system of Bose–Einstein condensation. Since the governing equations for soliton generation in fiber lasers and Bose–Einstein condensation have many properties in common, thus the simulation and propagation of pulsating waves may open a new route to explore the classical solitary dynamics in nonlinear optics and its quantum analogy in ultracold fields.