Numerical observation of SPM rogue waves in normal dispersion cascaded supercontinuum generation

Numerical modeling of cascaded mid-infrared (IR) supercontinuum generation (SCG) is used to study how an ensemble of spectrally and temporally distributed solitons from the long-wavelength part of an SC evolves when coupled into the normal dispersion regime of a highly nonlinear chalcogenide fiber. This has revealed a novel phenomenon-the generation of a high-energy rogue wave in the normal dispersion regime in the form of a strong self-phase-modulation (SPM) chirped pulse.

This SPM rogue wave is generated by swallowing the energy of many sufficiently closely spaced pulses through inter-pulse Raman amplification and is a key effect behind efficient cascaded mid-IR SCG.