--- _id: '1429' abstract: - lang: eng text: Solitons are localized waves formed by a balance of focusing and defocusing effects. These nonlinear waves exist in diverse forms of matter yet exhibit similar properties including stability, periodic recurrence and particle-like trajectories. One important property is soliton fission, a process by which an energetic higher-order soliton breaks apart due to dispersive or nonlinear perturbations. Here we demonstrate through both experiment and theory that nonlinear photocarrier generation can induce soliton fission. Using near-field measurements, we directly observe the nonlinear spatial and temporal evolution of optical pulses in situ in a nanophotonic semiconductor waveguide. We develop an analytic formalism describing the free-carrier dispersion (FCD) perturbation and show the experiment exceeds the minimum threshold by an order of magnitude. We confirm these observations with a numerical nonlinear Schrödinger equation model. These results provide a fundamental explanation and physical scaling of optical pulse evolution in free-carrier media and could enable improved supercontinuum sources in gas based and integrated semiconductor waveguides. acknowledgement: This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Center of Excellence CUDOS (CE110001018), ARC Laureate Fellowship (FL120100029), ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA DE120102069), the Netherlands Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). L.K. acknowledges funding from ERC Advanced Investigator Grant (no. 240438-CONSTANS). A.D.R, S.C., and G.L. acknowledge financial support from the ERC-Pharos programme lead by A. P. Mosk. article_number: 11332 (2016) author: - first_name: Chad full_name: Husko, Chad last_name: Husko - first_name: Matthias full_name: Wulf, Matthias id: 45598606-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 last_name: Wulf orcid: 0000-0001-6613-1378 - first_name: Simon full_name: Lefrançois, Simon last_name: Lefrançois - first_name: Sylvain full_name: Combrié, Sylvain last_name: Combrié - first_name: Gaëlle full_name: Lehoucq, Gaëlle last_name: Lehoucq - first_name: Alfredo full_name: De Rossi, Alfredo last_name: De Rossi - first_name: Benjamin full_name: Eggleton, Benjamin last_name: Eggleton - first_name: Laurens full_name: Kuipers, Laurens last_name: Kuipers citation: ama: Husko C, Wulf M, Lefrançois S, et al. Free-carrier-induced soliton fission unveiled by in situ measurements in nanophotonic waveguides. Nature Communications. 2016;7. doi:10.1038/ncomms11332 apa: Husko, C., Wulf, M., Lefrançois, S., Combrié, S., Lehoucq, G., De Rossi, A., … Kuipers, L. (2016). Free-carrier-induced soliton fission unveiled by in situ measurements in nanophotonic waveguides. Nature Communications. Nature Publishing Group. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11332 chicago: Husko, Chad, Matthias Wulf, Simon Lefrançois, Sylvain Combrié, Gaëlle Lehoucq, Alfredo De Rossi, Benjamin Eggleton, and Laurens Kuipers. “Free-Carrier-Induced Soliton Fission Unveiled by in Situ Measurements in Nanophotonic Waveguides.” Nature Communications. Nature Publishing Group, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11332. ieee: C. Husko et al., “Free-carrier-induced soliton fission unveiled by in situ measurements in nanophotonic waveguides,” Nature Communications, vol. 7. Nature Publishing Group, 2016. ista: Husko C, Wulf M, Lefrançois S, Combrié S, Lehoucq G, De Rossi A, Eggleton B, Kuipers L. 2016. Free-carrier-induced soliton fission unveiled by in situ measurements in nanophotonic waveguides. Nature Communications. 7, 11332 (2016). mla: Husko, Chad, et al. “Free-Carrier-Induced Soliton Fission Unveiled by in Situ Measurements in Nanophotonic Waveguides.” Nature Communications, vol. 7, 11332 (2016), Nature Publishing Group, 2016, doi:10.1038/ncomms11332. short: C. Husko, M. Wulf, S. Lefrançois, S. Combrié, G. Lehoucq, A. De Rossi, B. Eggleton, L. Kuipers, Nature Communications 7 (2016). date_created: 2018-12-11T11:51:58Z date_published: 2016-04-15T00:00:00Z date_updated: 2021-01-12T06:50:40Z day: '15' ddc: - '530' department: - _id: JoFi doi: 10.1038/ncomms11332 file: - access_level: open_access checksum: 6484fa81a2e52e4fdd7935e1ae6091d4 content_type: application/pdf creator: system date_created: 2018-12-12T10:15:53Z date_updated: 2020-07-14T12:44:53Z file_id: '5177' file_name: IST-2016-583-v1+1_ncomms11332.pdf file_size: 965176 relation: main_file file_date_updated: 2020-07-14T12:44:53Z has_accepted_license: '1' intvolume: ' 7' language: - iso: eng license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ month: '04' oa: 1 oa_version: Published Version publication: Nature Communications publication_status: published publisher: Nature Publishing Group publist_id: '5769' pubrep_id: '583' quality_controlled: '1' scopus_import: 1 status: public title: Free-carrier-induced soliton fission unveiled by in situ measurements in nanophotonic waveguides tmp: image: /images/cc_by.png legal_code_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode name: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) short: CC BY (4.0) type: journal_article user_id: 3E5EF7F0-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87 volume: 7 year: '2016' ...