APL Photonics (Sep 2023)

Highly multimode solitons in step-index optical fiber

  • Yuhang Wu,
  • Nicholas Bender,
  • Demetrios N. Christodoulides,
  • Frank W. Wise

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0166177
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 9
pp. 091301 – 091301-7

Abstract

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We report the generation of multimode solitons in step-index fibers. The solitons are superpositions of 5–10 temporally aligned transverse modes, they exhibit speckled beam profiles, and the spatio-spectral variation across the soliton can be complex. A greater understanding of multimode solitons should create a foundation for further research into complex multimode nonlinear phenomena in step-index fibers. With energies of tens of nanojoules and durations around 100 fs, the multimode solitons are speckled fields with peak powers that can exceed 300 kW, parameters that may be valuable in applications.