Ultrashort light pulses generated from modulation instability: background removal and soliton content

Modulation instability can be used to convert a continuous light wave into a train of pulses on a constant background. It is a longstanding discussion whether these pulses can be converted into solitons. We clarify the situation by using a more general mathematical context, invoking the Akhmediev breather, Peregrine soliton and Kuznetsov-Ma soliton solutions of the wave equation, and suggest the use of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer to remove the background. Expressions for the pulse widths and peak powers thus obtained are presented, and their soliton content is determined. It turns out that more than 95 % of each pulse’s energy can be converted to a soliton.