Dissipative rogue waves through multi-pulse collisions in a fiber laser

Summary form only given. Initiated first in the context of oceanography, the notion of rogue waves (RW) covers unexpected waves of extreme amplitude that are held responsible for lots of maritime disasters. The major challenge for scientific research worldwide is to progress in the prediction of these extreme events. The analogy with nonlinear optics greatly helps in developing useful experimental tools to progress in the understanding of RW phenomena. Recent reports have placed a special emphasis on the role of dissipative systems as to drive instabilities generating extreme pulses, reminding us that natural physical systems are inherently dissipative. In that respect, the laser cavity is becoming a paradigmatic rogue wave generator. Recently, we used a mode-locked fiber laser to present the first experimental demonstration of a new mechanism for rogue wave generation, following earlier theoretical predictions. Extreme peak-optical intensity events result from the nonlinear interactions and collisions of several pulses having chaotic relative motions, while they propagate round the laser cavity. The challenge is to record in real time the intensity fluctuations that take place inside of a pulse bunch of nanosecond duration. Thus, dissipative rogue wave observation is found to depend strongly on the electronic bandwidth of the optical intensity detection scheme. This peculiar feature shall be developed in our presentation, and compared to numerical simulations. We shall also explore the range of cavity settings where dissipative rogue wave (DRW) manifest, and clarify the observation of DRWs with respect to other pulsating regimes, such as Q-switched mode locking and noise-like pulse emission. Finally, the influence of a potential control, through external source injection, on DRW generation is also discussed.