Abstract

Supercontinuum (SC) generation in highly nonlinear photonic crystal fibers (PCF) has stimulated tremendous interest in recent years [1]. Particular results that have received recent widespread attention concern the observation of "optical rogue waves," statistically rare extreme red-shifted Raman solitons appearing on the long wavelength edge of the SC spectrum [2]. Further numerical analysis of these fluctuations have showed explicitly that the rogue soliton statistics exhibit strongly non-Gaussian extreme-value characteristics [3]. The previous studies of optical rogue wave statistics in SC generation have been carried out considering PCF with only one zero dispersion wavelength (ZDW). It is well known, however, that the use of PCF with two ZDW can significantly modify the SC generation process [4], and in this paper, we demonstrate that the use of a two ZDW fiber also impacts significantly on the long wavelength soliton statistics. Our main result is that the long wavelength soliton statistics depend very sensitively on input power, and Gaussian, uniform, or rogue wave characteristics can be observed in different regimes. These results are significant both for an improved understanding of the nonlinear dynamics of spectral broadening and for the selection of SC sources for particular applications.

© 2009 IEEE