Accelerated nonlinear interactions in graded-index multimode fibers

Abstract

Multimode optical fibers have recently reemerged as a viable platform for addressing a number of long-standing issues associated with information bandwidth requirements and power-handling capabilities. As shown in recent studies, the complex nature of such heavily multimoded systems can be effectively exploited to observe altogether novel physical effects arising from spatiotemporal and intermodal linear and nonlinear processes. Here, we study for the first time, accelerated nonlinear intermodal interactions in core-diameter decreasing multimode fibers. We demonstrate that in the anomalous dispersion region, this spatiotemporal acceleration can lead to relatively blue-shifted multimode solitons and blue-drifting dispersive wave combs, while in the normal domain, to a notably flat and uniform supercontinuum, extending over 2.5 octaves. Our results pave the way towards a deeper understanding of the physics and complexity of nonlinear, heavily multimoded optical systems, and could lead to highly tunable optical sources with very high spectral densities.