Flexibly regulating dissipative optical soliton molecules via intracavity additional phase bias
Phys. Rev. A 112, 063529 – Published 16 December, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z1zy-t569
Abstract
Facilitated by complex interactions in a nonlinear dissipative system, solitons can be bound as particle-like structures (“soliton molecules”), with potential applications in biomedical imaging, data coding storage, high-capacity optical communications, and so on. Here, we demonstrate a flexible control of diversiform bound states formation in an all-polarization-maintaining mode-locked fiber laser via direct manipulation of the additional phase bias in the cavity. Adjusting the waveplate orientation in a nonreciprocal phase shifter provides different additional phase biases for both orthogonally polarized light signals, and the changed asymmetry of nonlinear amplifying loop mirror induces the variation of the nonlinear phase-shift difference between the clockwise and counterclockwise directions, programming the formation of soliton molecules (SMs) and SM complexes with different dynamics patterns. More importantly, this straightforward approach allows for switching between single-soliton and dual-soliton molecule or triple-soliton molecule under appropriate small-signal gain. The findings offer novel approaches for an in-depth understanding of the nonlinear soliton interaction mechanism and the generation of reconfigurable soliton molecules in ultrafast science.
