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  • Perspective
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The bright prospects of optical solitons after 50 years

Nature Photonics volume 17, pages 937–942 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The idea of temporal solitons in optical fibres as a means to compensate for the chromatic dispersion-induced temporal broadening of pulses via the intensity-dependent refractive index of silica (the Kerr effect) was introduced by Hasegawa and Tappert in a paper that was submitted on 12 April 1973. In this Perspective we present a brief historical overview of how this prediction developed in light of other technological developments made through the decades, followed by an extensive forward-looking discussion on the most exciting opportunities in soliton research.

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Fig. 1: Soliton concepts, technologies and applications.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our many colleagues, with whom we have shared the soliton journey. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Linn Mollenauer, a leading figure in optical fibre soliton experimental science, who passed away on 28 July 2021. When finishing the manuscript, we learned that Vladimir Zakharov, another soliton science pioneer, passed away on 20 August 2023. We acknowledge his profound contributions, which have provided our field with inspiration and with solid mathematical foundations. We thank F. Mangini for help in preparing the figure. C.M.d.S. is supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (DP230102200) and the Asian Office of Aerospace R&D (AOARD) (grant no. FA2386-19-1-4067). S.W. is supported by the European Research Council (grant 740355) and the European Union under the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) of NextGenerationEU, partnership on ‘Telecommunications of the Future’ (PE00000001—program ‘RESTART’). S.K.T. acknowledges support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (project EP/W002868/1). C.X. is supported by NIH/NIBIB R01EB033179 and NIH/NINDS U01NS128660.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

    Andrea Blanco-Redondo

  2. Institute for Photonics and Optical Sciences (IPOS), School of Physics, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    C. Martijn de Sterke

  3. School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Chris Xu

  4. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Stefan Wabnitz

  5. Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Sergei K. Turitsyn

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  1. Andrea Blanco-Redondo
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Correspondence to Andrea Blanco-Redondo.

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Blanco-Redondo, A., de Sterke, C.M., Xu, C. et al. The bright prospects of optical solitons after 50 years. Nat. Photon. 17, 937–942 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01307-9

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