Abstract

Four states of bound-soliton operation in a passively mode-locked fiber ring laser have been revealed. Detailed studies on their properties show that they are not just binding states of single-pulse solitons, but rather a novel form of solitary waves in the laser, twin-pulse (-hump) temporal solitons. We demonstrated both experimentally and numerically that, like the single-pulse soliton operation, the twin-pulse soliton emission is another intrinsic feature of the laser.

© 2003 Optical Society of America