Thermalization of Orbital Angular Momentum Beams in Multimode Optical Fibers.

We report on the thermalization of light carrying orbital angular momentum in multimode optical fibers, induced by nonlinear intermodal interactions. A generalized Rayleigh-Jeans distribution of asymptotic mode composition is obtained, based on the conservation of the angular momentum. We confirm our predictions by numerical simulations and experiments based on holographic mode decomposition of multimode beams. Our work establishes new constraints for the achievement of spatial beam self-cleaning, giving previously unforeseen insights into the underlying physical mechanisms.

Experimental observation of self-imaging in SMF-28 optical fibers.

Spatial self-imaging, consisting of the periodic replication of the optical transverse beam profile along the propagation direction, can be achieved in guided wave systems when all excited modes interfere in phase. We exploited material defects photoluminescence for directly visualizing self-imaging in a few-mode, nominal singlemode SMF-28 optical fiber. Visible luminescence was excited by intense femtosecond infrared pulses via multiphoton absorption processes. Our method permits us to determine the mode propagation constants and the cutoff wavelength of transverse fiber modes.

Statistical properties of nonlinear distortion of a polarization-multiplexed OFDM signal in long-haul fiber links.

We investigate nonlinear transmission regimes of a polarization-multiplexed 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (PDM-16-QAM) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexed (OFDM) signal in a long-haul optical link. We study the dependence between the strength of nonlinear distortion and statistical properties of a PDM-OFDM signal. We also consider the constellation shaping-based solutions that allow to significantly reduce the bit error rate (up to three to 12 times at the cost of 5%-20% signal redundancy) and propose a method to analytically optimize the symbol distribution for higher-order modulation formats using only the initial signal.

Highly efficient few-mode spatial beam self-cleaning at 1.5µm.

We experimentally demonstrate that spatial beam self-cleaning can be highly efficient when obtained with a few-mode excitation in graded-index multimode optical fibers. By using 160 ps long, highly chirped (6 nm bandwidth at -3dB) optical pulses at 1562 nm, we demonstrate a one-decade reduction of the power threshold for spatial beam self-cleaning, with respect to previous experiments using pulses with laser wavelengths at 1030-1064 nm. Self-cleaned beams remain spatio-temporally stable for more than a decade of their peak power variation. The impact of input pulse temporal duration is also studied.

Hydrodynamic 2D Turbulence and Spatial Beam Condensation in Multimode Optical Fibers.

We show that Kerr beam self-cleaning results from parametric mode mixing instabilities that generate a number of nonlinearly interacting modes with randomized phases-optical wave turbulence, followed by a direct and inverse cascade towards high mode numbers and condensation into the fundamental mode, respectively. This optical self-organization effect is an analogue to wave condensation that is well known in hydrodynamic 2D turbulence.