Controllable Generation of Ultrashort Multi-Bound Solitons in a Mode-Locked Erbium-Doped Ring Laser with a Highly-Nonlinear Resonator

Abstract

Mode-locked (ML) ultrashort pulse (USP) fiber lasers can be treated as an ideal platform to expand future applications due to a complex nonlinear dynamics with a presence of a high value of a group velocity dispersion and a third-order dispersion in the laser resonator. Up to now a series of novel ML regimes have been investigated e.g. self-similar pulses, noise-like pulses, multi-bound solitons, and a soliton rain generation. Multi-bound solitons (MBS) generation regime, also known as soliton molecules, is of considerable interest in various fields of applications. For example, the investigation of a MBS generation is very attractive for increasing the data transfer capacity in telecommunications due to coding alphabet extension. The coding concept of MBS suggests a data stream using more than two symbols (2·N symbols, where N is the number of generated solitons in a bound state) [1]. And also, recent research shows that using ultrafast bursts of pulses can improve the quality of laser ablation for medical applications [2]. Moreover, MB S generation can be also used in a coherent pulse staking amplification scheme increasing an amplification efficiency along with a formation of high-energy solitons at a high-repetition-rate [3].