Spatio-temporal generation regimes in fiber laser systems (Review)

This paper presents a new concept for the study of spatio-temporal generation regimes in which several time scales coexist in the radiation (one of which is related to the cavity round-trip time). The essence of the concept is that the time dependence of the intensity is investigated in two dimensions, one of which corresponds to the evolution over successive cavity round trips. It is shown that fiber lasers of various types, e.g., quasicontinuous lasers and passively and actively mode-locked pulsed lasers, have a variety of spatio-temporal generation regimes. The possibility of experimental detection of localized structures, including solitons, in fiber laser radiation is demonstrated. The prospects of the proposed approach are discussed.