Spatio-temporal dynamics in fibre lasers

Sergei Turitsyn
s.k.turitsyn@aston.ac.uk
Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University, B4 7ET, Birmingham, UK
Understanding of the properties of nonlinear photonic systems is important both for the fundamental science and because of their relevance to numerous applications of light technology. Nonlinearity is an essential component in the design of numerous photonic devices, but it is often shunned by engineers in view of its practical intractability and greatly increased difficulty of comprehension of system behavior. The understanding and mastering of nonlinear effects can translate into improving performance of the existing devices and enabling a new generation of engineering concepts. However, many measurement techniques and signal processing methods have been developed and optimised for linear systems. Understanding of nonlinear dynamics would greatly benefit from new measurement approaches. I will review our recent works on the nonlinear science of fibre lasers, including spatio-temporal dynamics and new approaches for theoretical and experimental analysis of such systems.