The dissipative Talbot soliton fiber laser

Talbot effect, characterized by the replication of a periodic optical field in a specific plane, is governed by diffraction and dispersion in the spatial and temporal domains, respectively. In mode-locked lasers, Talbot effect is rarely linked with soliton dynamics since the longitudinal mode spacing and cavity dispersion are far away from the self-imaging condition. We report switchable breathing and stable dissipative Talbot solitons in a multicolor mode-locked fiber laser by manipulating the frequency difference of neighboring spectra. The temporal Talbot effect dominates the laser emission state—in the breathing state when the integer self-imaging distance deviates from the cavity length and in the steady state when it equals the cavity length. A refined Talbot theory including dispersion and nonlinearity is proposed to accurately depict this evolution behavior. These findings pave an effective way to control the operation in dissipative optical systems and open branches in the study of nonlinear physics.