Phase-dependent spectral control of pulsed modulation instability via dichromatic seed fields
arXiv:1311.3901 · doi:10.1007/s00340-013-5759-9
Abstract
We investigated experimentally and numerically the spectral control of modulation instability (MI) dynamics via the initial phase relation of two weak seed fields. Specifically, we show how second-order modulation instability dynamics exhibit phase-dependent anti-correlated growth rates of adjacent spectral sidebands. This effect enables a novel method to control MI-based frequency conversion: in contrast to first-order MI dynamics, which exhibit a uniform phase dependence of the growth rates, second-order MI dynamics allow to redistribute the spectral energy, leading to an asymmetric spectrum. Therefore, the presented findings should be very attractive to different applications, such as phase-sensitive amplification or supercontinuum generation initiated by MI.