2016/06/16 by Qi‐Fan Yang, Qi-Fan Yang, Xu Yi +3 · 230 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Fiber Laser Technologies #Laser #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Nonlinear optics #Nonlinear system #Optical fiber #Optics #Optoelectronics #Photonic Crystal and Fiber Optics #Photonics #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Soliton #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nphys3875
published in Nature Physics 13(1), 53-57 (Nature Portfolio) · Qi-Fan Yang and Xu Yi contributed equally to this work
arxiv created 2016/06/16 · openalex publication_date 2016/09/05 · arxiv updated 2017/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Solitons are wavepackets that resist dispersion through a self-induced potential well. They are studied in many fields, but are especially well known in optics on account of the relative ease of their formation and control in optical fiber waveguides. Besides their many interesting properties, solitons are important to optical continuum generation, in mode-locked lasers and have been considered as a natural way to convey data over great distances. Recently, solitons have been realized in microcavities thereby bringing the power of microfabrication methods to future applications. This work reports a soliton not previously observed in optical systems, the Stokes soliton. The Stokes soliton forms and regenerates by optimizing its Raman interaction in space and time within an optical-potential well shared with another soliton. The Stokes and the initial soliton belong to distinct transverse mode families and benefit from a form of soliton trapping that is new to microcavities and soliton lasers in general. The discovery of a new optical soliton can impact work in other areas of photonics including nonlinear optics and spectroscopy.