Synthesis and dissociation of soliton molecules in parallel optical-soliton reactors

Wenbin He,Meng Pang,Jiapeng Huang,Philip St J Russell,Dung-Han Yeh

doi:10.1038/s41377-021-00558-x

Abstract

Mode-locked lasers have been widely used to explore interactions between optical solitons, including bound-soliton states that may be regarded as “photonic molecules”. Conventional mode-locked lasers normally, however, host at most only a few solitons, which means that stochastic behaviours involving large numbers of solitons cannot easily be studied under controlled experimental conditions. Here we report the use of an optoacoustically mode-locked fibre laser to create hundreds of temporal traps or “reactors” in parallel, within each of which multiple solitons can be isolated and controlled both globally and individually using all-optical methods. We achieve on-demand synthesis and dissociation of soliton molecules within these reactors, in this way unfolding a novel panorama of diverse dynamics in which the statistics of multi-soliton interactions can be studied. The results are of crucial importance in understanding dynamical soliton interactions and may motivate potential applications for all-optical control of ultrafast light fields in optical resonators.

Highlights

Temporal optical solitons in optical fibres, since first observed four decades ago[1], have attracted widespread interest and stimulated foresight in applications that would potentially revolutionize optical communication[2] and computations[3] in the light of their particle-like properties
The studies on soliton interactions continue to date and are currently experiencing a vibrant renaissance, partly due to developments of the time-stretched dispersive Fourier transform (DFT) method[6], which facilitates resolving of transient soliton dynamics, as well as due to trending focuses on soliton microresonators[7,8,9], which as novel platforms, advance rapidly towards chip-scale integration
Reminiscent of real molecules synthesized from single atoms, optical soliton molecules behave like a single entity while displaying complex internal dynamics[12,13,22,23,24,25], and have attracted considerable interest in both fundamental nonlinear physics and refreshed application promises such as ultrafast lasers[10,26,27], spectroscopy[28], optical communications[2,29], and all-optical information processing[3,13,15,30]

Summary

Introduction

Temporal optical solitons in optical fibres, since first observed four decades ago[1], have attracted widespread interest and stimulated foresight in applications that would potentially revolutionize optical communication[2] and computations[3] in the light of their particle-like properties. The cavity of a mode-locked laser, which has been routinely used as a platform for investigating complex soliton dynamics[10,12,22,31,32,33,34], was conventionally able to host only few solitons generated out of random excitations[23,24]. These solitons are the result of dual balances, with gain and loss as dissipative factors in addition to Kerr-nonlinearity and dispersion hosted by

Methods

Results

Conclusion