Soliton rains in a fiber laser: An experimental study

Rains of solitons constitute a class of nonlinear dynamics of dissipative soliton ensembles that we briefly reported in Opt. Express 17, 11776 (2009) from a fiber laser experiment. The existence of a relatively intense noisy background together with several tens of soliton pulses aggregated in a condensed soliton phase constitutes a necessary condition for their appearance. New soliton pulses form spontaneously from the background fluctuations and drift until they reach the condensed soliton phase. We here relate in detail the experimental conditions under which soliton rains manifest and their key features, describe related dynamics observed in their vicinity, and propose an explanation for soliton rain dynamics.