Soliton dynamics of megawatt ultrashort light pulses in a hollow photonic-crystal fiber: Effect of high-order dispersion and retarded nonlinearity

The properties of megawatt optical solitons in hollow photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) are studied. We demonstrate regimes where high-power laser pulses can be compressed to a few cycles of light field and identify the main tendencies in the soliton dynamics of ultrashort laser pulses in hollow PCFs originating from dispersion properties and limited transmission band of such waveguides. The influence of retarded nonlinearity on the soliton dynamics of high-power laser pulses in a hollow PCF is analyzed. In a multisoliton regime, retarded nonlinearity and high-order dispersion are shown to result in the formation of high-power pulses displaying no oscillations of their temporal envelope, which would be typical of standard high-order solitons.