IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v16y2025i1d10.1038_s41467-025-59990-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On-demand tailoring soliton patterns through intracavity spectral phase programming

Author

Listed:
  • Heze Zhang

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

  • Chao Zeng

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

  • Yueqing Du

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

  • Guanghua Cheng

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

  • Biqiang Jiang

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

  • Zhipei Sun

    (Aalto University, Aalto)

  • Xuechun Lin

    (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

  • Meng Pang

    (Chinese Academy of Sciences)

  • Jianlin Zhao

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

  • Dong Mao

    (Northwestern Polytechnical University)

Abstract

Multi-pulse oscillations are prevalent phenomena observed in mode-locked lasers and nonlinear microresonators, where the short- and long-range interactions between nonlinear wavepackets give rise to diverse pulse patterns such as soliton molecules, soliton crystals, and soliton bursts. However, these intricate nonlinear interactions are highly sensitive to the parameters of dissipative systems, leaving the properties of multiple pulses far from being controlled, which hampers their applications such as high-speed optical communication and material processing. In this study, we propose a universal approach for quantitatively tailoring multiple solitons in mode-locked fibre lasers through spectral phase programming, enabling the on-demand generation of soliton patterns with separations that follow from constant, geometric, or arithmetic sequences. By combining with spectral filtering, we demonstrate dual-colour soliton patterns in the same cavity, further highlighting the adaptability of soliton structures. Numerical simulations validate the experimental observations, demonstrating that the spectral phase modulates solitons to emit sub-pulses, which interact with other solitons to generate trapping potentials, thereby giving rise to diverse soliton patterns.

Suggested Citation

  • Heze Zhang & Chao Zeng & Yueqing Du & Guanghua Cheng & Biqiang Jiang & Zhipei Sun & Xuechun Lin & Meng Pang & Jianlin Zhao & Dong Mao, 2025. "On-demand tailoring soliton patterns through intracavity spectral phase programming," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-11, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59990-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-59990-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59990-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-025-59990-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ze-Xian Zhang & Min Luo & Jia-Hao Liu & Yi-Tao Yang & Ti-Jian Li & Meng Liu & Ai-Ping Luo & Wen-Cheng Xu & Zhi-Chao Luo, 2024. "Coherence-controlled chaotic soliton bunch," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Jinlong Xu & Chi Zhang & Yulin Wang & Mudong Wang & Yanming Xu & Tianqi Wei & Zhenda Xie & Shiqiang Liu & Chao-Kuei Lee & Xiaopeng Hu & Gang Zhao & Xinjie Lv & Han Zhang & Shining Zhu & Lin Zhou, 2024. "All-in-one, all-optical logic gates using liquid metal plasmon nonlinearity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    3. Zhizhou Lu & Hao-Jing Chen & Weiqiang Wang & Lu Yao & Yang Wang & Yan Yu & B. E. Little & S. T. Chu & Qihuang Gong & Wei Zhao & Xu Yi & Yun-Feng Xiao & Wenfu Zhang, 2021. "Synthesized soliton crystals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-7, December.
    4. Sun, Yifan & Parra-Rivas, Pedro & Ferraro, Mario & Mangini, Fabio & Wabnitz, Stefan, 2023. "Dynamics of dissipative structures in coherently-driven Kerr cavities with a parabolic potential," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    5. Junyin Zhang & Chengli Wang & Connor Denney & Johann Riemensberger & Grigory Lihachev & Jianqi Hu & Wil Kao & Terence Blésin & Nikolai Kuznetsov & Zihan Li & Mikhail Churaev & Xin Ou & Gabriel Santama, 2025. "Ultrabroadband integrated electro-optic frequency comb in lithium tantalate," Nature, Nature, vol. 637(8048), pages 1096-1103, January.
    6. Anton Lukashchuk & Johann Riemensberger & Maxim Karpov & Junqiu Liu & Tobias J. Kippenberg, 2022. "Dual chirped microcomb based parallel ranging at megapixel-line rates," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    7. Z. Q. Wang & K. Nithyanandan & A. Coillet & P. Tchofo-Dinda & Ph. Grelu, 2019. "Optical soliton molecular complexes in a passively mode-locked fibre laser," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    8. Johann Riemensberger & Anton Lukashchuk & Maxim Karpov & Wenle Weng & Erwan Lucas & Junqiu Liu & Tobias J. Kippenberg, 2020. "Massively parallel coherent laser ranging using a soliton microcomb," Nature, Nature, vol. 581(7807), pages 164-170, May.
    9. Can Kerse & Hamit Kalaycıoğlu & Parviz Elahi & Barbaros Çetin & Denizhan K. Kesim & Önder Akçaalan & Seydi Yavaş & Mehmet D. Aşık & Bülent Öktem & Heinar Hoogland & Ronald Holzwarth & Fatih Ömer Ilday, 2016. "Ablation-cooled material removal with ultrafast bursts of pulses," Nature, Nature, vol. 537(7618), pages 84-88, September.
    10. W. He & M. Pang & D. H. Yeh & J. Huang & C. R. Menyuk & P. St. J. Russell, 2019. "Formation of optical supramolecular structures in a fibre laser by tailoring long-range soliton interactions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xiaomin Lv & Binbin Nie & Chen Yang & Rui Ma & Ze Wang & Yanwu Liu & Xing Jin & Kaixuan Zhu & Zhenyu Chen & Du Qian & Guanyu Zhang & Guowei Lv & Qihuang Gong & Fang Bo & Qi-Fan Yang, 2025. "Broadband microwave-rate dark pulse microcombs in dissipation-engineered LiNbO3 microresonators," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Dawoon Jeong & Hansol Jang & Min Uk Jung & Taeho Jeong & Hyunsoo Kim & Sanghyeok Yang & Janghyeon Lee & Chang-Seok Kim, 2024. "Spatio-spectral 4D coherent ranging using a flutter-wavelength-swept laser," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Mingming Nie & Jonathan Musgrave & Kunpeng Jia & Jan Bartos & Shining Zhu & Zhenda Xie & Shu-Wei Huang, 2024. "Turnkey photonic flywheel in a microresonator-filtered laser," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-8, December.
    4. Mao, Ding & Dai, Ke & Chen, Yue & Ma, Huihui & Yuan, Zichuan & Zhang, Yusheng & Ling, Qiang & Luo, Si & Guan, Zuguang & Chen, Daru & Cui, Yudong, 2025. "Synthesis of soliton supramolecular structures in ultrafast lasers based on Mach-Zehnder interference," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 194(C).
    5. Yifan Qi & Xingyu Jia & Jingyi Wang & Weiwei Yang & Yihan Miao & Xinlun Cai & Guanhao Wu & Yang Li, 2025. "1.79-GHz acquisition rate absolute distance measurement with lithium niobate electro-optic comb," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-9, December.
    6. Mingming Nie & Kunpeng Jia & Yijun Xie & Shining Zhu & Zhenda Xie & Shu-Wei Huang, 2022. "Synthesized spatiotemporal mode-locking and photonic flywheel in multimode mesoresonators," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    7. Okan Atalar & Raphaël Laer & Amir H. Safavi-Naeini & Amin Arbabian, 2022. "Longitudinal piezoelectric resonant photoelastic modulator for efficient intensity modulation at megahertz frequencies," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    8. Wenting Wang & Ping-Keng Lu & Abhinav Kumar Vinod & Deniz Turan & James F. McMillan & Hao Liu & Mingbin Yu & Dim-Lee Kwong & Mona Jarrahi & Chee Wei Wong, 2022. "Coherent terahertz radiation with 2.8-octave tunability through chip-scale photomixed microresonator optical parametric oscillation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    9. Thomas Bunel & Julien Lumeau & Antonin Moreau & Arnaud Fernandez & Olivier Llopis & Germain Bourcier & Auro M. Perego & Matteo Conforti & Arnaud Mussot, 2025. "Brillouin-induced Kerr frequency comb in normal dispersion fiber Fabry Perot resonators," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-8, December.
    10. Rana Asgari Sabet & Aqiq Ishraq & Alperen Saltik & Mehmet Bütün & Onur Tokel, 2024. "Laser nanofabrication inside silicon with spatial beam modulation and anisotropic seeding," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    11. Rui Niu & Ming Li & Shuai Wan & Yu Robert Sun & Shui-Ming Hu & Chang-Ling Zou & Guang-Can Guo & Chun-Hua Dong, 2023. "kHz-precision wavemeter based on reconfigurable microsoliton," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-6, December.
    12. Dong Mao & Huaqiang Wang & Heze Zhang & Chao Zeng & Yueqing Du & Zhiwen He & Zhipei Sun & Jianlin Zhao, 2021. "Synchronized multi-wavelength soliton fiber laser via intracavity group delay modulation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-8, December.
    13. Yan, Dan & Li, Xingliang & Han, Mengmeng & Zhang, Shumin, 2024. "Partially “invisible” pulsation of asymmetric soliton molecules," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    14. Xuguang Zhang & Zixuan Zhou & Yijun Guo & Minxue Zhuang & Warren Jin & Bitao Shen & Yujun Chen & Jiahui Huang & Zihan Tao & Ming Jin & Ruixuan Chen & Zhangfeng Ge & Zhou Fang & Ning Zhang & Yadong Liu, 2024. "High-coherence parallelization in integrated photonics," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.
    15. Qixuan Lin & Shucheng Fang & Yue Yu & Zichen Xi & Linbo Shao & Bingzhao Li & Mo Li, 2025. "Optical multi-beam steering and communication using integrated acousto-optics arrays," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-7, December.
    16. Hu, Deng-wang & Wang, Fei & Li, Jia-cheng & Deng, Tao & Wu, Jia-gui & Wu, Zheng-mao & Xia, Guang-qiong, 2024. "Wideband chaotic comb source using a weak-resonant-cavity Fabry-Perot laser diode subject to optical feedback for parallel random number generation," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    17. Grigory Lihachev & Wenle Weng & Junqiu Liu & Lin Chang & Joel Guo & Jijun He & Rui Ning Wang & Miles H. Anderson & Yang Liu & John E. Bowers & Tobias J. Kippenberg, 2022. "Platicon microcomb generation using laser self-injection locking," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    18. Junting Liu & Fang Yang & Junpeng Lu & Shuai Ye & Haowen Guo & Hongkun Nie & Jialin Zhang & Jingliang He & Baitao Zhang & Zhenhua Ni, 2022. "High output mode-locked laser empowered by defect regulation in 2D Bi2O2Se saturable absorber," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    19. Ruobing Qian & Kevin C. Zhou & Jingkai Zhang & Christian Viehland & Al-Hafeez Dhalla & Joseph A. Izatt, 2022. "Video-rate high-precision time-frequency multiplexed 3D coherent ranging," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    20. Gregory Moille & Edgar F. Perez & Jordan R. Stone & Ashutosh Rao & Xiyuan Lu & Tahmid Sami Rahman & Yanne K. Chembo & Kartik Srinivasan, 2021. "Ultra-broadband Kerr microcomb through soliton spectral translation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-59990-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.