2013/01/22 by Chad A. Husko, Sylvain Combrié, Sylvain Combrie +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/srep01100
published as Scientific Reports 3, 1100 (2013) · 14 pages (main body and supplement), 11 figures - earlier draft; http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130122/srep01100/full/srep01100.html
openalex publication_date 2013/01/22 · arxiv created 2013/01/24 · arxiv updated 2013/01/25 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Solitary waves have consistently captured the imagination of scientists, ranging from fundamental breakthroughs in spectroscopy and metrology enabled by supercontinuum light, to gap solitons for dispersionless slow-light and discrete spatial solitons in lattices, amongst others. Recent progress in strong-field atomic physics include impressive demonstrations of attosecond pulses and high-harmonic generation via photoionization of free-electrons in gases at extreme intensities of 10 14 W/cm 2 . Here we report the first phase-resolved observations of femtosecond optical solitons in a semiconductor microchip, with multiphoton ionization at picojoule energies and 10 10 W/cm 2 intensities. The dramatic nonlinearity leads to picojoule observations of free-electron-induced blue-shift at 10 16 cm −3 carrier densities and self-chirped femtosecond soliton acceleration. Furthermore, we evidence the time-gated dynamics of soliton splitting on-chip and the suppression of soliton recurrence due to fast free-electron dynamics. These observations in the highly dispersive slow-light media reveal a rich set of physics governing ultralow-power nonlinear photon-plasma dynamics.