Optical fibres are favourable tabletop laboratories to investigate both coherent and incoherent nonlinear waves. In particular, exact solutions of the one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation such as fundamental solitons or solitons on finite background can be generated by launching periodic, specifically designed coherent waves in optical fibres. It is an open fundamental question to know whether these coherent structures can emerge from the nonlinear propagation of random waves. However the typical sub-picosecond timescale prevented—up to now—time-resolved observations of the awaited dynamics. Here, we report temporal ‘snapshots’ of random light using a specially designed ‘time-microscope’. Ultrafast structures having peak powers much larger than the average optical power are generated from the propagation of partially coherent waves in optical fibre and are recorded with 250 femtoseconds resolution. Our experiment demonstrates the central role played by ‘breather-like’ structures such as the Peregrine soliton in the emergence of heavy-tailed statistics in integrable turbulence.

The linewidth narrowing observed in Brillouin fiber ring lasers is studied within the framework of the usual three-wave model of stimulated Brillouin scattering. We show that the phase noise of the pump laser is transferred to the emitted Stokes wave after being strongly reduced and smoothed under the combined influence of the acoustic damping and the cavity feedback. We then derive a simple analytical relation connecting the full width at half maximum of the Stokes linewidth to that of the pump laser.

We report optical experiments allowing us to investigate integrable turbulence in the focusing regime of the one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation (1D NLSE). In analogy with broad spectrum excitation of a one-dimensional water tank, we launch random initial waves in a single mode optical fiber. Using an original optical sampling setup, we measure precisely the probability density function of optical power of the partially coherent waves rapidly fluctuating with time. The probability density function is found to evolve from the normal law to a strong heavy-tailed distribution, thus revealing the formation of rogue waves in integrable turbulence. Numerical simulations of 1D NLSE with stochastic initial conditions quantitatively reproduce the experiments. Our numerical investigations suggest that the statistical features experimentally observed rely on the stochastic generation of coherent analytic solutions of 1D NLSE.

We report experimental confirmation of the universal emergence of the Peregrine soliton predicted to occur during pulse propagation in the semiclassical limit of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Using an optical fiber based system, measurements of temporal focusing of high power pulses reveal both intensity and phase signatures of the Peregrine soliton during the initial nonlinear evolution stage. Experimental and numerical results are in very good agreement, and show that the universal mechanism that yields the Peregrine soliton structure is highly robust and can be observed over a broad range of parameters.