Ricerc@Sapienza

Nonlinear mode coupling in multimode optical fibers leads to complex self-organization phenomena. These are associated with the emergence of extreme waves, in the form of stable nonlinear coherent attractors characterized by low-order transverse mode patterns. The periodic or quasi-periodic oscillations of the multimode beam intensity due to mode beating lead to light scattering into a series of spectral sidebands spanning multiple octaves.

We overview recent advances in the nonlinear optics of multimode optical fibers, including ultrabroadband sideband and supercontinuum generation, Kerr and Raman beam cleanup, modal modulation instabilities, four wave mixing, and second harmonic beam cleaning.

We experimentally study the interplay of Kerr and Raman beam cleanup in multimode air-silica microstructure optical fiber. The interplay of modal four-wave mixing and Raman scattering leads to high-brightness multimode supercontinuum

By controlling pump modes injected in the normal dispersion regime of few-mode graded index optical fiber, we investigated intermodal noise-seeded modulation instability and generation of highly-detuned cascaded intermodal four-wave mixing sidebands.

We overview recent experimental results of beam self-cleaning observed in various types of multimode fibers. We analyze the output spatial beam shapes and their connection with the refractive index profile of the fibers.

Modal attraction towards low order modes in a GRIN multimode fiber was experimentally observed at high power and characterized, thus enriching the dynamics of the Kerr self-cleaning effect leading to quasi fundamental mode generation.

We experimentally study the polarization dynamics of Kerr beam self-cleaning in a multimode fiber. We reveal that spatial beam cleanup is accompanied by nonlinear polarization evolution and a significant increase of the degree of polarization.

Kerr beam cleaning is very sensitive both to the incident angle and beam size. The last one defines the number of excited modes at the entrance of GRIN MMF that should be not too high and not too low. We have measured the output beam spectrum as a function of peak power and analyzed it together with the beam profile variation.

Multimode optical fibers (MMFs) have recently regained interest because of the degrees of freedom associated with their different eigenmodes. In the nonlinear propagation regime in particular, new phenomena have been unveiled in graded-index (GRIN) MMFs such as geometric parametric instabilities and Kerr beam self-cleaning [1, 2]. The speckled pattern observed at the output of the MMF at low powers, is transformed at high powers into a bell-shaped beam close to the fundamental mode.

Spatial Kerr beam self-cleaning (KBSC), which transforms an output speckled beam in a quasi-single mode beam in graded index (GRIN) multimode optical fibers (MMFs), has been reported recently [1,2]. GRIN MMFs are also interesting waveguides for supercontinuum (SC) generation in the visible and near infrared regions, as successfully demonstrated by launching femtosecond or subnanosecond pulses in the anomalous (1550 nm) or normal (1064 nm) dispersion regime, respectively [1,3].