Polychromatic soliton molecules

Abstract: Soliton molecules, bound states composed of interacting fundamental solitons, exhibit remarkable resemblance with chemical compounds and phenomena in quantum mechanics. Whereas optical molecules composed of two or more temporally locked solitons have been observed in a variety of platforms, soliton molecules formed by bound solitons at different frequencies have only recently been theoretically proposed. Here, we report the observation of polychromatic soliton molecules within a mode-locked laser cavity, achieving the desired dispersion by implementing a spectral pulse-shaper. This system supports two or more coincident solitons with different frequencies, but common group velocities. Our results open new directions of exploration in nonlinear dynamics within systems with complex dispersion and offer a convenient platform for optical analogies to mutual trapping and spectral tunneling in quantum mechanics.