Explosion dynamics of invisible pulsation solitons in an Er-doped passively mode-locked fiber laser

An invisible pulsation soliton (IPS) is a novel type of soliton with an inconspicuous pulse energy fluctuation in contrast with a stable soliton. In this work, echoing previous investigations of IPS dynamics, such as the IP of soliton molecules, the IP of harmonic mode locking, and intermittent IP induced by temporal-gain dynamics, we report the experimental observation of IPS explosion dynamics in a mode-locked fiber laser. Three types of IPS explosion phenomena with different evolution characteristics are successively obtained, i.e., an ordinary IPS explosion, an IPS explosion accompanied by soliton splitting, and an IPS explosion induced by collision after soliton splitting. Our work provides complementary evidence for IPS as a metastable state, and might benefit the understanding of nonlinear soliton dynamics.