Abstract
We report an optical fiber experiment in which we study the nonlinear stage of modulational instability of a plane wave in the presence of a localized perturbation. Using a recirculating fiber loop as the experimental platform, we show that the initial perturbation evolves into an expanding nonlinear oscillatory structure exhibiting some universal characteristics that agree with theoretical predictions based on integrability properties of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Our experimental results demonstrate the persistence of the universal evolution scenario, even in the presence of small dissipation and noise in an experimental system that is not rigorously of an integrable nature.
Highlights
Modulational instability (MI), known as the BenjaminFeir instability in water waves, is a ubiquitous phenomenon in focusing nonlinear media that is manifested in the growth of small, long-wavelength perturbations of a constant background [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Using a recirculating fiber loop as the experimental platform, we show that the initial perturbation evolves into an expanding nonlinear oscillatory structure exhibiting some universal characteristics that agree with theoretical predictions based on integrability properties of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation
When a localized initial perturbation of a plane wave has an arbitrary shape, it was recently shown using the inverse scattering transform solutions of the 1D NLSE that the nonlinear dynamics of MI is characterized by a longtime “hyperbolic” scenario, where a universal nonlinear oscillatory structure develops and expands in time with finite speed [28,29,30]
Summary
Modulational instability (MI), known as the BenjaminFeir instability in water waves, is a ubiquitous phenomenon in focusing nonlinear media that is manifested in the growth of small, long-wavelength perturbations of a constant background [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. We report an optical fiber experiment in which we study the nonlinear stage of modulational instability of a plane wave in the presence of a localized perturbation.
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