On the phase-dependent manifestation of optical rogue waves**This article is one of a series published throughout 2011 and 2012 in Nonlinearity on the topic of Rogue Waves.

Abstract

We perform a detailed analysis of the phase sensitivity of optical fibre soliton collision and energy exchange dynamics resulting from Raman scattering. We show that the relative phase of colliding solitons has a significant effect on the fraction of energy transferred for solitons with a large bandwidth and/or with a small centre frequency detuning. We consider the implications of our results from the particular perspective of optical rogue wave formation in noise-driven supercontinuum generation. A particular conclusion is that extreme soliton trajectories identified as a class of optical rogue wave arise because of collisions between emerging solitons with a zero-phase difference.