Soliton explosion control by higher-order effects

We numerically study the impact of self-frequency shift, self-steepening, and third-order dispersion on the erupting soliton solutions of the quintic complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. We find that the pulse explosions can be completely eliminated if these higher-order effects are properly conjugated two by two. In particular, we observe that positive third-order dispersion can compensate the self-frequency shift effect, whereas negative third-order dispersion can compensate the self-steepening effect. A stable propagation of a fixed-shape pulse is found under the simultaneous presence of the three higher-order effects. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America