Editor's Summary
13 December 2007
Catch a freak wave
Mariners have known for centuries that freak, giant waves can appear out of the blue in the ocean. The probability of encountering such a 'rogue' wave was recently found to be much larger than expected from conventional wave-amplitude statistics. In an effort to understand the physics of such events, Solli et al. investigate the concept of optical rogue waves. Using a new real-time detection technique, they study a system — based on a microstructured optical fibre — that exposes extremely steep, large optical waves as rare outcomes from an injection of a population of almost-identical optical pulses. The optical rogue waves arise when random noise perturbs the initially smooth pulses with a certain frequency shift and within a well-defined time window.
News and Views: Photonics: Rogue waves surface in light
How do the freak waves that haunt seafarers' nightmares arise? We don't know, is the short answer — but the discovery of a similar phenomenon in optical waves might assist in getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Dong-Il Yeom & Benjamin J. Eggleton
doi:10.1038/450953a
Letter: Optical rogue waves
D. R. Solli, C. Ropers, P. Koonath & B. Jalali
doi:10.1038/nature06402
