Seminarium Optyczne

Optical solitary waves (solitons) represent one of the key concepts in laser physics. They result froman interplay between intracavity dispersion and nonlinearity at high optical intensities. However, opticalsolitons have the striking ability to form transient or stable pulse aggregates referred to as soliton molecules.Despite their perspective use in quantum memories or next-generation telecommunication systems, from alaser development perspective they pose a significant difficulty. The multi-pulse emission of laser lighthinders nonlinear frequency conversion and induces pronounced amounts of noise. It is also not trivial todetect such structures using conventional techniques like intensity autocorrelation or spectral analysis due toinstrument limitations. Therefore, their presence often goes unnoticed. During the talk, we will discuss anovel, easy-to-implement tool for rapid, real-time diagnostics of pulsed lasers that relies on two-photoninteraction on a nonlinear photodetector. The technique enables us to probe soliton molecules spaced byfemtoseconds to nanoseconds at arbitrary wavelengths and over arbitrary time scales using a conventionaltelecom-grade laser oscillator and a low-bandwidth oscilloscope. We will discuss the application of ourtechnique to monitoring simple soliton triplets and quadruplets along with more complex systems likemolecular crystals or soliton rains