Abstract
Since the recent demonstration of self-trapping of a quasi-monochromatic partially spatially incoherent light beam1 and of a white light beam that is both, spectrally and spatially incoherent,2 there has been increased interest in so-called multimode solitons. These are self-trapped beams that constitute more than one transverse mode. More specifically, a soliton forms when the optical beam induces a waveguide via the nonlinearity and is guided in its own induced waveguide. Prior to the observations reported in Refs. 1 and 2, all observed solitons were such that only the lowest mode in the induced waveguide was populated. Therefore, all observed solitons were single mode and “single humped” (had a single intensity peak). However, in saturable nonlinear media, the induced waveguide can be multimode.3 When more than one mode of the induced waveguide is populated, the soliton is multimode and can have more than one intensity peak (multihump). For such a multimode soliton to exhibit a stationary nonevolving profile throughout propagation, the modes must not interfere with each other because this would cause a periodic oscillation in the optical intensity and thus give rise to a periodic induced waveguide. This can be achieved in two manners: (1) the modes are polarized orthogonal to each other,4 or (2) the modes are incoherent with respect to each other. Here we employ the latter option and believe we show the first experimental demonstration of a multihumped multimode soliton.
© 1998 Optical Society of America
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