Harnessing and control of optical rogue waves in supercontinuum generation

We present a numerical study of the evolution dynamics of optical rogue waves, statistically-rare extreme red-shifted soliton pulses arising from supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber [ D. R. Solli et al. Nature 450, 1054-1058 ( 2007)]. Our specific aim is to use nonlinear Schrodinger equation simulations to identify ways in which the rogue wave dynamics can be actively controlled, and we demonstrate that rogue wave generation can be enhanced by an order of magnitude through a small modulation across the input pulse envelope and effectively suppressed through the use of a sliding frequency filter. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.