Rogue waves in femtosecond supercontinuum generation

We study experimentally the characteristics of optical rogue waves in supercontinuum generation in the femtosecond regime. Specifically, we show that the intensity histograms obtained from spectrally filtering the supercontinuum exhibit the L-shaped characteristics typical of extreme-value phenomena on the long wavelength. Furthermore, the form of the histogram on the long wavelength edge varies from L-shaped to quasi-Gaussian as wavelengths closer to the pump are included in the filtered measurements. Finally, we show that coupling between the red-shifting solitons on the long wavelength side and dispersive waves on the short wavelength side through cross-phase modulation leads to similar L-shaped statistics when using a low-pass filter on the blue side of the supercontinuum spectrum.