Universal soliton pattern formations in passively mode-locked fiber lasers

Opt Lett. 2011 May 1;36(9):1545-7. doi: 10.1364/OL.36.001545.

Abstract

We investigate multiple-soliton pattern formations in a figure-of-eight passively mode-locked fiber laser. Operation in the anomalous dispersion regime with a double-clad fiber amplifier allows generation of up to several hundreds of solitons per round trip. We report the observation of remarkable soliton distributions: soliton gas, soliton liquid, soliton polycrystal, and soliton crystal, thus indicating the universality of such complexes.