Soliton dynamics in the multiphoton plasma regime

Solitary waves have consistently captured the imagination of scientists, ranging from fundamental breakthroughs in spectroscopy and metrology enabled by supercontinuum light, to gap solitons for dispersionless slow-light, and discrete spatial solitons in lattices, amongst others. Recent progress in strong-field atomic physics include impressive demonstrations of attosecond pulses and high-harmonic generation via photoionization of free-electrons in gases at extreme intensities of 1014 W/cm2.

Here we report the first phase-resolved observations of femtosecond optical solitons in a semiconductor microchip, with multiphoton ionization at picojoule energies and 1010 W/cm2 intensities. The dramatic nonlinearity leads to picojoule observations of free-electron-induced blue-shift at 1016 cm−3 carrier densities and self-chirped femtosecond soliton acceleration.

Furthermore, we evidence the time-gated dynamics of soliton splitting on-chip, and the suppression of soliton recurrence due to fast free-electron dynamics. These observations in the highly dispersive slow-light media reveal a rich set of physics governing ultralow-power nonlinear photon-plasma dynamics.