Bright-Dark Rogue Waves

Abstract

During the last two decades, revealing mechanisms of origin waves with anomalous amplitude (rogue waves) have been in the focus of researchers from different fields ranging from oceanography to laser physics. Mode-locked lasers, as a test bed system, provide a unique opportunity to collect more data on rogue waves in the form of random pulses (soliton rain) and to clarify the mechanisms of rogue-wave emergence caused by soliton–soliton and soliton–dispersive wave interactions. Here, for the first time, for an Er-doped mode-locked laser, a new type of vector rogue waves is demonstrated experimentally and theoretically, which is driven by desynchronization of the orthogonal linear states of polarization, so leading to output power oscillations in the form of anomalous spikes-dips (bright-dark rogue waves). The results can pave the way to unlocking the universal nature of the origin of rogue waves and thus can be of interest to the broad scientific community.