Higher-order modulation instability in fiber optics

We report on analytical, numerical and experimental studies of higher-order modulation instability in fiber optics. This new form of instability arises from the nonlinear superposition of elementary instabilities and manifests as complex, yet deterministic temporal pulse break-up dynamics. We use the Darboux transformation to analytically describe the process and compare with experiments. In particular, we show how suitably low frequency modulation on a continuous wave field allows for the excitation of higher-order modulation instability through cascaded four-wave mixing.