Third-order dispersion for generating optical rogue solitons

We theoretically and numerically evidence that optical rare and strong temporal events generated in fiber supercontinua originate from convective modulational instabilities. This convective nature is induced by higher-order terms (odd-order dispersion and stimulated Raman scattering) that break the time reversal symmetry of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. We demonstrate (i) analytically that the third-order dispersion term alone turns the system to be convectively unstable and (ii) numerically that the sign of the curvature of the tail of the probability density function changes (in logarithmic scale) when the third-order dispersion term is added. This latter feature results in more powerful rare events. If, in addition, stimulated Raman scattering is taken into account, both the convective instabilities and the power of extreme events are further enhanced giving rise to a probability density function with a more pronounced Curvature. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.