Manipulation of the Spatiotemporal Trajectories of Solitons Using Arbitrary Potentials in Recirculating Fiber Loop

The interplay between anomalous dispersion and Kerr nonlinearity in optical fibers allow for the creation of short pulses, called solitons, able to propagate without distortion over virtually infinite distance [1]. These wavepackets are known to exhibit a particle-like behaviour, emerging unaltered from pairwise collisions except for small temporal shifts [2]. In optical fibers, their dynamics is well mastered, yet manipulating their properties during propagation is complex and most often relies on specific fiber designs. We have developed an original experiment which enables precise and highly configurable spatiotemporal manipulation of optical solitons by making them circulate repeatedly in a fiber loop while synchronously applying an arbitrary shaped temporal phase modulation. This modulation applied at each roundtrip creates an effective external potential that alters in a controllable way the spatiotemporal trajectories of the solitons.