Interacting ultrashort light pulses

Light pulses with a duration of 10-12 seconds or less are now ubiquitous and essential in several areas of science and technology. These pulses are formed as dissipative solitons, that is, spatially localized attractor states of nonlinear wave systems — traditionally in mode-locked lasers, and more recently in driven Kerr microresonators. Beyond the standard single-soliton waveforms, lasers and resonators generate multi-soliton states that exhibit particle-like motion and interactions. Recent advances in ultrafast experimental techniques have greatly expanded the ability to observe and manipulate these dynamics, leading to the discovery of a rapidly growing variety of intriguing effects, including the formation of soliton molecule bound states, excitation of periodic, quasiperiodic, and chaotic oscillations, synchronization, and dynamical transitions.

In this talk, I will introduce the principles of dissipative soliton optics, briefly outline relevant nonlinear wave models, and explain how to extract effective dynamical systems for the soliton global degrees of freedom. I will then use the effective models to uncover the mechanism behind some of the recently observed complex multisoliton phenomena, while others are not yet fully understood.