Nail Akhmediev - Böcker

Soliton-like beams in highly non-linear materials such as organic polymers are being studied with a view to using them for fast-switching purposes, in devices where the light creates its own guiding channel. This text provides a treatment of the applications of non-linear light pulses in optical fibres and spatial solitons in switching devices. It presents the results of recent research on the subject in an accessible manner and adopts a unified approach to solitons in fibres and the devices which use them.

This volume is devoted to the exciting topic of dissipative solitons, i.e. pulses or spatially localised waves in systems exhibiting gain and loss. Examples are laser systems, nonlinear resonators and optical transmission lines. The physical principles and mathematical concepts are explained in a clear and concise way, suitable for students and young researchers. The similarities and differences in the notion of a soliton between dissipative systems and Hamiltonian and integrable systems are discussed, and many examples are given. The contributions are written by the world's leading experts in the field, making it a unique exposition of this emerging topic.

During almost four decades of blossoming, soliton science produced brilliant results based on the “inverse scattering technique”, which allowed for construction of soliton solutions for a variety of integrable systems describing physics of water waves, light propagation, etc.

This volume is devoted to the exciting topic of dissipative solitons, i.e. pulses or spatially localised waves in systems exhibiting gain and loss. Examples are laser systems, nonlinear resonators and optical transmission lines. The physical principles and mathematical concepts are explained in a clear and concise way, suitable for students and young researchers. The similarities and differences in the notion of a soliton between dissipative systems and Hamiltonian and integrable systems are discussed, and many examples are given. The contributions are written by the world's leading experts in the field, making it a unique exposition of this emerging topic.

The aim of publishing this book is the further development of the concept of dissipative solitons, which has been in the air for at least the last decade and a half. Since the development of classical soliton theory in the 1960s, the theory of these “nonlinear modes” of integrable systems outgrew its initial ideas. The purely mathematical concept, as it appeared in the work of Zabusky and Kruskal in 1965, required experimental veri cation, and this was successfully carried out in liquids, optical bers, and some other exotic media. Scientists came to the conclusion that “solitons are everywhere”. Indeed, the notion of solitons gave a powerful boost to the multibillion industry of telecommunications. The idea of solitons underlies our understanding of tidal bores, cyclones and massive ocean waves like tsunamis. There is no doubt that the magni cent phenomenon known as “Morning Glory” – a cloud wave hundreds of kilometers long – is also a dissipative soliton. During almost four decades of blossoming, soliton science produced brilliant results based on the “inverse scattering technique”, which allowed for construction of soliton solutions for a variety of integrable systems describing physics of water waves, light propagation, etc. At the same time, experimental scientists realized that the framework of a few particular “integrable systems” does not fully allow us to describe real applications which do not exactly belong to the class of “integrable equations”. Life is actually more complicated than the exceptional image of ideal solitons in an “integrable world”.