Infinite hierarchy of solitons: Interaction of Kerr nonlinearity with even orders of dispersion

Abstract

Temporal solitons are optical pulses that arise from the balance of negative group-velocity dispersion and self-phase modulation. For decades, only quadratic dispersion was considered with higher order dispersion often thought of as a nuisance. Following the recent observation of pure-quartic solitons, we here provide experimental and numerical evidence for an infinite hierarchy of solitons that balance self-phase modulation and arbitrary negative pure, even-order dispersion. Specifically, we experimentally demonstrate the existence of solitons with pure-sextic (β_{6}), -octic (β_{8}), and -decic (β_{10}) dispersion, limited only by the performance of our components, and we numerically show the existence of solitons involving pure 16th-order dispersion. These results broaden the fundamental understanding of solitons and present avenues to engineer ultrafast pulses in nonlinear optics and its applications.