Striking Nonlinear Dynamics of Mode-Locked Fibre Lasers

We report on the real-time observation of various remarkable nonlinear phenomena in mode-locked fibre lasers. These include the build-up of dissipative solitons and soliton molecules, collision-induced soliton explosions, and the excitation and dynamics of breathing dissipative solitons and breather molecular complexes. Numerical simulations of the laser model support our experimental findings.