Controlling soliton spectral tunneling via symmetric Airy pulses at the advanced stage of supercontinuum generation

Abstract

Soliton spectral tunneling effects play an important role in coherent supercontinuum generation. Here, we propose a method to control the soliton spectral tunneling by using femtosecond symmetric Airy pulses in photonic crystal fibers with three zero dispersion wavelength points. We show that the tunneling solitons induced by symmetric Airy pulses carry higher spectral energy and are excited at shorter propagation distance compared to those induced by Airy pulses or sech solitons. In addition, we disclose the influence of the truncation coefficients, initial chirp and the potential barrier which sandwiched between two anomalous dispersion regions, on the soliton spectral tunneling processes. These findings indicate that symmetric Airy pulses, due to their abruptly autofocusing behaviors, provide an effective freedom for controlling soliton spectral tunneling dynamics in nonlinear optical systems.