Xia Ran, Liu Yusong, Huang Siyun, Luo Yiyang, Sun Qizhen, Tang Xiahui, Xu Gang
Opt Express. 2023 Jul 3;31(14):22710-22721. doi: 10.1364/OE.493250.
Optical soliton molecules exhibiting behaviors analogous to matter molecules have been the hotspot in the dissipative system for decades. Based on the dispersion Fourier transformation technique, the real-time spectral interferometry has become the popular method to reveal the internal dynamics of soliton molecules. The rising degrees of freedom in pace with the increased constitutes of soliton molecules yield more intriguing sights into the internal motions. Yet the soliton molecules with three or more pulses are rarely investigated owing to the exponentially growing complexity. Here, we present both experimental and theoretical studies on the soliton molecules containing three solitons. Different assemblies of the constitutes are categorized as different types of soliton triplet akin to the geometric isomer, including equally-spaced triplet and unequally-spaced triplet. Typical soliton triplets with different dynamics including regular internal motions, hybrid phase dynamics and complex dynamics involving separation evolution are experimentally analyzed and theoretically simulated. Specifically, the energy difference which remains elusive in experiments are uncovered through the simulation of diverse triplets with plentiful dynamics. Moreover, the multi-dimensional interaction space is proposed to visualize the internal motions in connection with the energy exchange, which play significant roles in the interplays among the solitons. Both the experimental and numerical simulations on the isomeric soliton triplets would release a larger number of degrees of freedom and motivate the potentially artificial configuration of soliton molecules for various ultrafast applications, such as all-optical buffering and multiple encoding for telecommunications.
几十年来，表现出与物质分子类似行为的光学孤子分子一直是耗散系统中的研究热点。基于色散傅里叶变换技术，实时光谱干涉测量法已成为揭示孤子分子内部动力学的常用方法。随着孤子分子组成部分的增加，自由度不断上升，这为研究其内部运动提供了更多有趣的视角。然而，由于复杂性呈指数增长，含有三个或更多脉冲的孤子分子很少被研究。在此，我们展示了对包含三个孤子的孤子分子的实验和理论研究。类似于几何异构体，组成部分的不同组合被归类为不同类型的孤子三重态，包括等间距三重态和不等间距三重态。对具有不同动力学的典型孤子三重态进行了实验分析和理论模拟，这些动力学包括规则的内部运动、混合相位动力学以及涉及分离演化的复杂动力学。具体而言，通过对具有丰富动力学行为的不同三重态进行模拟，揭示了实验中难以捉摸的能量差。此外，还提出了多维相互作用空间，以可视化与能量交换相关的内部运动，能量交换在孤子之间的相互作用中起着重要作用。对异构孤子三重态的实验和数值模拟都将释放更多的自由度，并推动孤子分子在各种超快应用中实现潜在的人工配置，如全光缓冲和电信的多重编码。
