Intermodal soliton interaction in nearly degenerate modes of a multimode fiber

We numerically investigate the interaction of two temporal solitons propagating in the two degenerate or nearly degenerate modes of a multimode fiber. Similar to the case of single-mode fibers, the solitons are found to attract or repel each other depending on their relative phase, even though they belong to two different modes of the fiber. However, unlike the single-mode case, each soliton transfers some of its power to the other mode through intermodal four-wave mixing. Our results show that, in spite of this intermodal power transfer, each soliton keeps propagating as a bimodal soliton and interacts with the other bimodal soliton as if they were propagating inside a single-mode fiber. Indeed, the total power in the two modes evolves similar to the case of a single-mode fiber. We study the impact of varying input parameters such as the relative phase, amplitude, and spacing of the two input pulses used to excite the fundamental solitons and point out differences introduced by the intermodal nature of the nonlinear effects.

[1]  G. Millot,et al.  Nonlinear virtues of multimode fibre , 2015, Nature Photonics.

[2]  Arash Mafi,et al.  Phase matching for spontaneous frequency conversion via four-wave mixing in graded-index multimode optical fibers , 2016 .

[3]  C. Desem,et al.  Reducing soliton interaction in single-mode optical fibres , 1987 .

[4]  Vincent Couderc,et al.  Observation of Geometric Parametric Instability Induced by the Periodic Spatial Self-Imaging of Multimode Waves. , 2016, Physical review letters.

[5]  G. Agrawal,et al.  Stimulated Raman scattering cascade spanning the wavelength range of 523 to 1750 nm using a graded-index multimode optical fiber , 2013, 1301.6203.

[6]  F. Wise,et al.  Optical solitons in graded-index multimode fibres , 2013, Nature Communications.

[7]  Daniel A. Nolan,et al.  Self-organized instability in graded-index multimode fibres , 2016 .

[8]  Daniel A. Nolan,et al.  Determining principal modes in a multimode optical fiber using the mode dependent signal delay method , 2015 .

[9]  David Yevick,et al.  Numerical investigation of soliton interaction , 1983 .

[10]  Frank W. Wise,et al.  Ultrabroadband Dispersive Radiation by Spatiotemporal Oscillation of Multimode Waves , 2016 .

[11]  Logan G. Wright,et al.  Controllable spatiotemporal nonlinear effects in multimode fibres , 2015, Nature Photonics.

[12]  R. W. Tkach,et al.  Experimental Investigation of Inter-Modal Four-Wave Mixing in Few-Mode Fibers , 2013, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[13]  Mark Shtaif,et al.  Stokes-space analysis of modal dispersion in fibers with multiple mode transmission. , 2012, Optics express.

[14]  C. Desem,et al.  Soliton interaction in the presence of loss and periodic amplification in optical fibers. , 1987, Optics letters.

[15]  Thierry Georges,et al.  Modulation, filtering, and initial phase control of interacting solitons , 1993 .

[16]  Ruo Yu Gu,et al.  Resolution limits for imaging through multi-mode fiber. , 2013, Optics express.

[17]  P. V. Mamyshev,et al.  Pulse-overlapped dispersion-manageddata transmission and intrachannel four-wave mixing , 1999 .

[18]  C. Desem,et al.  Soliton propagation in the presence of source chirping and mutual interaction in single-mode optical fibres , 1987 .

[19]  A. Mafi,et al.  Nonlinear switching in multicore versus multimode waveguide junctions for mode-locked laser applications. , 2013, Optics express.

[20]  Y. Kodama,et al.  Soliton interaction in optical fibers. , 1987, Optics letters.

[21]  Nick Doran,et al.  Bandwidth limits of nonlinear (soliton) optical communication systems , 1983 .

[22]  M. Lisak,et al.  Bandwidth limits due to incoherent soliton interaction in optical-fiber communication systems. , 1985, Physical review. A, General physics.

[23]  Tomáš Čižmár,et al.  Seeing through chaos in multimode fibres , 2015, Nature Photonics.

[24]  Vincent Couderc,et al.  Spatial beam self-cleaning in multimode fibres , 2016, Nature Photonics.

[25]  Jochen Schröder,et al.  Observation of Eisenbud–Wigner–Smith states as principal modes in multimode fibre , 2015, Nature Photonics.

[26]  Shaival Buch,et al.  Soliton stability and trapping in multimode fibers. , 2015, Optics letters.

[27]  M. Lisak,et al.  Bandwidth limits due to mutual pulse interaction in optical soliton communication systems. , 1986, Optics letters.

[28]  Demetri Psaltis,et al.  Two-photon imaging through a multimode fiber. , 2015, Optics express.

[29]  J. Gordon.  Interaction forces among solitons in optical fibers. , 1983, Optics letters.

[30]  L. Nelson,et al.  Space-division multiplexing in optical fibres , 2013, Nature Photonics.

[31]  Frank W. Wise,et al.  Spatiotemporal dynamics of multimode optical solitons , 2015, 2015 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO).

[32]  Mark Shtaif,et al.  Coupled Manakov equations in multimode fibers with strongly coupled groups of modes. , 2012, Optics express.

[33]  Francesco Poletti,et al.  Description of ultrashort pulse propagation in multimode optical fibers , 2008 .

[34]  R. Essiambre,et al.  Nonlinear Propagation in Multimode and Multicore Fibers: Generalization of the Manakov Equations , 2012, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[35]  G. Raybon,et al.  Intra-channel cross-phase modulation and four-wave mixing in high-speed TDM systems , 1999 .

[36]  Guifang Li,et al.  Space-division multiplexing: the next frontier in optical communication , 2014 .

[37]  M. Guasoni,et al.  Generalized modulational instability in multimode fibers: wideband multimode parametric amplification , 2015, 1508.00380.

[38]  Arash Mafi,et al.  Pulse Propagation in a Short Nonlinear Graded-Index Multimode Optical Fiber , 2012, Journal of Lightwave Technology.

[39]  L. Mollenauer,et al.  Experimental observation of interaction forces between solitons in optical fibers. , 1987, Optics letters.

[40]  A. Mecozzi,et al.  Nonlinear propagation in multi-mode fibers in the strong coupling regime. , 2012, Optics express.

[41]  P. Mamyshev,et al.  Pulse-overlapped dispersion-managed data transmission and intrachannel four-wave mixing. , 1999, Optics letters.