title: Melting and freezing of light pulses and modes in mode-locked lasers.
abstract: We present a first experimental demonstration of melting of light pulses and freezing of lightwave modes by applying external noise which acts like temperature, verifying our recent theoretical prediction (Gordon and Fischer [1]). The experiment was performed in a fiber laser passively mode-locked by nonlinear rotation of polarization. The first order phase transition was observed directly in time domain and also by measurement of the quartic order parameter (RF power).
authors.forename: Ariel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gordon
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vodonos
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Smulakovski
authors.forename: Baruch
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fischer