Abstract

Stability is made possible in soliton fiber lasers when the length sealing of the physical parameters of the laser are substantially less than the characteristic soliton period, ie the laser operates in the “average soliton” mode.^1,2 When the amplification length and the soliton period become comparable, the generated solitons begin to experience excess dispersion and excess nonlinearity per round trip, which leads toinstability of the soliton and the generation of a dispersive wave The response of the soliton and the dispersive wave to the periodic amplification gives rise to characteristic spectral components³ and instability in the temporal domain. This behaviour has been observed in various cavity configurations.

© 1993 Optical Society of America