Quantitative relations between modulational instability and several well-known nonlinear excitations

Abstract

We study on the relations between modulational instability and several well-known nonlinear excitations in a nonlinear fiber, such as bright soliton, nonlinear continuous wave, Akhmediev breather, Peregrine rogue wave, and Kuznetsov-Ma breather. We present a quantitative correspondence between them based on the dominant frequency and propagation constant of each perturbation on a continuous wave background. Especially, we find rogue wave comes from modulational instability under the "resonance" perturbation with continuous wave background. These results will deepen our understanding on rogue wave excitation and could be helpful for controllable nonlinear wave excitations in nonlinear fiber and other nonlinear systems.