title: Pure-quartic solitons.
abstract: Temporal optical solitons have been the subject of intense research due to their intriguing physics and applications in ultrafast optics and supercontinuum generation. Conventional bright optical solitons result from the interaction of anomalous group-velocity dispersion and self-phase modulation. Here we experimentally demonstrate a class of bright soliton arising purely from the interaction of negative fourth-order dispersion and self-phase modulation, which can occur even for normal group-velocity dispersion. We provide experimental and numerical evidence of shape-preserving propagation and flat temporal phase for the fundamental pure-quartic soliton and periodically modulated propagation for the higher-order pure-quartic solitons. We derive the approximate shape of the fundamental pure-quartic soliton and discover that is surprisingly Gaussian, exhibiting excellent agreement with our experimental observations. Our discovery, enabled by precise dispersion engineering, could find applications in communications, frequency combs and ultrafast lasers.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Blanco-Redondo
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: C Martijn
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: de Sterke
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: de Sterke C
authors.initials: de SC
authors.lastname: Martijn
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 Street George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A7.
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Sipe
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
authors.forename: Thomas F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Krauss
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Benjamin J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Eggleton
authors.affiliation: Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Institute of Photonics and Optical Science (IPOS), School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Chad
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Husko
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