TY - JOUR

T1 - Breather Molecular Complexes in a Passively Mode-Locked Fiber Laser

AU - Peng, Junsong

AU - Zhao, Zihan

AU - Boscolo, Sonia

AU - Finot, Christophe

AU - Sugavanam, Srikanth

AU - Churkin, Dmitry V.

AU - Zeng, Heping

N1 - Funding Information: The authors acknowledge funding support from the National Key Research and Development Program (2018YFB0407100), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (62022033, 12074122, 11621404, and 11727812), Key Project of Shanghai Education Commission (2017‐01‐07‐00‐05‐E00021), Science and Technology Innovation Program of Basic Science Foundation of Shanghai (18JC1412000), Shanghai Rising‐Star Program, and National Key Laboratory Foundation of China (6142411196307). Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/7

Y1 - 2021/7

N2 - Breathing solitons are nonlinear waves in which the energy concentrates in a localized and oscillatory fashion. Similarly to stationary solitons, breathers in dissipative systems can form stable bound states displaying molecule-like dynamics, which are frequently called breather molecules. So far, the experimental observation of optical breather molecules and the real-time detection of their dynamics are limited to diatomic molecules, that is, bound states of only two breathers. In this work, the observation of different types of breather complexes in a mode-locked fiber laser: multibreather molecules, and molecular complexes originating from the binding of two breather-pair molecules or a breather pair molecule and a single breather is reported. The intermolecular temporal separation of the molecular complexes attains several hundreds of picoseconds, which is more than an order of magnitude larger than that of their stationary soliton counterparts and is a signature of long-range interactions. Numerical simulations of the laser model support the experimental findings. Moreover, nonequilibrium dynamics of breathing solitons are also observed, including breather collisions and annihilation. This work opens the possibility of studying the dynamics of many-body systems in which breathers are the elementary constituents.

AB - Breathing solitons are nonlinear waves in which the energy concentrates in a localized and oscillatory fashion. Similarly to stationary solitons, breathers in dissipative systems can form stable bound states displaying molecule-like dynamics, which are frequently called breather molecules. So far, the experimental observation of optical breather molecules and the real-time detection of their dynamics are limited to diatomic molecules, that is, bound states of only two breathers. In this work, the observation of different types of breather complexes in a mode-locked fiber laser: multibreather molecules, and molecular complexes originating from the binding of two breather-pair molecules or a breather pair molecule and a single breather is reported. The intermolecular temporal separation of the molecular complexes attains several hundreds of picoseconds, which is more than an order of magnitude larger than that of their stationary soliton counterparts and is a signature of long-range interactions. Numerical simulations of the laser model support the experimental findings. Moreover, nonequilibrium dynamics of breathing solitons are also observed, including breather collisions and annihilation. This work opens the possibility of studying the dynamics of many-body systems in which breathers are the elementary constituents.

KW - breathers

KW - mode locking

KW - ultrafast fiber lasers

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107375484&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1002/lpor.202000132

DO - 10.1002/lpor.202000132

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85107375484

VL - 15

JO - Laser and Photonics Reviews

JF - Laser and Photonics Reviews

SN - 1863-8880

IS - 7

M1 - 2000132

ER -