Quantized conical waves in multimode optical fibers

Abstract

Multimode optical fibers has emerged as the platform that will bridge the gap between nonlinear optics in bulk media and in single-mode fibers. However, the understanding of the transition between these two research fields still remains incomplete despite numerous investigations of intermodal nonlinear phenomena and spatiotemporal coupling. Some of the striking phenomena observed in bulk media with ultrashort and ultra-intense pulses (i.e., conical emission, harmonic generation and light bullets) require a deeper insight to be possibly unveiled in multimode fibers. Here we generalize the concept of conical waves described in bulk media towards structured media, such as multimode optical fibers, in which only a discrete and finite number of modes can propagate. The modal distribution of optical fibers provides a quantization of conical emission (e.g., quantized X-waves) through phase-matched resonant radiations (i.e., dispersive waves) seeded by optical shocks or ultrashort wave structures during spatiotemporal compression stages. Such quantized dispersion- and diffraction-free waves are generated when a rather intense short pulse propagates nonlinearly in a multimode waveguide, whatever the dispersion regime and waveguide geometry. Future nonlinear experiments in commercially-available multimode fibers could reveal different forms of conical emission and an easy control of supercontinuum light bullets.

6 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Diffraction-free space-time beams
• Observation of geometric parametric instability induced by the periodic spatial self-imaging of multimode waves
• Spontaneously generated X-shaped light bullets
• Dynamic Nonlinear X-waves for Femtosecond Pulse Propagation in Water
• Ultrabroadband dispersive radiation by spatiotemporal oscillation of multimode waves
• Conical emission, pulse splitting and X-wave parametric amplification in nonlinear dynamics of ultrashort light pulses
• On the nature of spatiotemporal light bullets in bulk Kerr media
• Multimodal unidirectionnal pulse propagation equation

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Space-time wave packets localized in all dimensions
• V-Waves: Spatio-temporally induced group-velocity dispersion in free space
• Experimental observation of spontaneous emission of space-time wavepacket in a multimode optical fiber
• Observation of ultrabroadband striped space-time surface plasmon polaritons
• Refraction of space-time wave packets: I. Theoretical principles
• The consequences of non-differentiable angular dispersion in optics: Tilted pulse fronts versus space-time wave packets
• Non-differentiable angular dispersion as an optical resource
• Theory of space-time supermodes in planar multimode waveguides
• Multiple intermodal-vectorial four-wave-mixing bands generated by selective excitation of orthogonally polarized LP01 and LP11 modes in a birefringent fiber
• Spatio-temporal thermalization and adiabatic cooling of guided light waves
• Spatio-temporal equilibrium thermodynamics of guided optical waves at positive and negative temperatures