We experimentally demonstrate a pump-pulse-induced conversion of noise into solitons in multimode optical fibers. The process is based on the recently discovered phenomenon of soliton self-mode conversion, where a pump soliton in a higher-order spatial mode crafts another well-defined soliton, originating purely from noise, in a lower-order mode at a longer wavelength through intermodal Raman scattering. The lack of the need for any seed or cavity feedback demonstrates that soliton self-mode conversion is a fundamentally unavoidable, but nevertheless tailorable and hence useful, self-organizing nonlinear optical effect capable of turning noise into transform limited solitons.
Fragility of a soliton’s shot-to-shot coherence
We show that a soliton in a high-order spatial mode of a multi-mode fiber can completely lose its shot-to-shot coherence due to a noise seed with energy orders of magnitude below that of the soliton. The total degradation of shot-to-shot coherence is caused by a very strong recently demonstrated intermodal nonlinear effect, soliton self-mode conversion. The results indicate that the robustness of solitons against perturbations is not entirely applicable in the presence of intermodal nonlinearities, and, more generally, that certain single-mode results cannot be trivially extrapolated to multi-mode fibers.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10193196
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Optics Letters
- Volume:
- 45
- Issue:
- 19
- ISSN:
- 0146-9592; OPLEDP
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- Article No. 5393
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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