Instabilities, breathers and rogue waves in optics

Abstract

Optical rogue waves are rare yet extreme fluctuations in the value of an optical field. The terminology was first used in the context of an analogy between pulse propagation in optical fibre and wave group propagation on deep water, but has since been generalized to describe many other processes in optics. This paper provides an overview of this field, concentrating primarily on propagation in optical fibre systems that exhibit nonlinear breather and soliton dynamics, but also discussing other optical systems where extreme events have been reported. Although statistical features such as long-tailed probability distributions are often considered the defining feature of rogue waves, we emphasise the underlying physical processes that drive the appearance of extreme optical structures.

38 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Harnessing and control of optical rogue waves in supercontinuum generation
• Non-Gaussian statistics and extreme waves in a nonlinear optical cavity
• Real-time full bandwidth measurement of spectral noise in supercontinuum generation
• Modulation control and spectral shaping of optical fiber supercontinuum generation in the picosecond regime
• Non-Gaussian Statistics of Multiple Filamentation
• Soliton-based discriminator of non-coherent optical pulses

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Baseband Modulation Instability as the Origin of Rogue Waves
• Optical Rogue Waves in integrable turbulence
• Stochasticity, periodicity and coherent structures in partially mode-locked fibre lasers
• State Transition Induced by Higher-order Effects and Background Frequency
• Coherent supercontinuum generation in a silicon photonic wire in the telecommunication wavelength range
• On the features of the Optical Rogue Waves observed in the Kerr lens mode locked Ti:Sapphire laser
• Higher-order rogue wave dynamics for a derivative nonlinear Schrödinger equation
• Caustics and Rogue Waves in an Optical Sea
• Breathers and black rogue waves of coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations with dispersion and nonlinearity of opposite signs