Talk:Soliton (optics)

B-class

I've tagged this article as B-class because it nees cleanup for encyclopedic tone. The current text is a mix of conversational tone, for example starting a sentence with "anyway", and textbook or journal-article tone, mainly in the large amount of equations relative to text. -- The Photon 03:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd go a bit further and say that it looks to have been directly copied from some textbook or lecture, but I don't have a clue which. This particular type of (frankly idiotic) "we" language barely exists outside of textbooks and contributes to making them more painful to read than necessary. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 03:10, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Problem with Solition Picture

The picture by Alessio Damato doesn't correspond with the text. The text states that higher frequency components travel faster (spatially) than lower ones in the case of GVD, and the opposite for Kerr nonlinearities. However, the picture shows the opposite. For normal dispersion the index of refraction decreases with wavelength, so the velocity of a wave $v=c_{0}/n$ should be slower for higher frequencies. Will adjust article to match this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drnathanfurious (talk • contribs) 14:09, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Problem with lens picture

Regarding good optical design, the plano-convex lens should be facing the other way with the convex side encountering the light first rather than the planar side. It's not super important, it just might be good to perpetuate good lens practices. The current orientation yields high spherical aberration whereas swapping sides works significantly better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.155.131.70 (talk) 01:21, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

My advisor taught me to align the beam toward the flat side of the lens to minimize light scattering upward toward people's eyes... but alas, you are right. The correct way is not what I was taught!

Chronology of spatial solitons

Spatial solitons were previously known simply as self-focussing. So far as I know their use in optics predates the use of temporal solitons - though they were apparently modelled for wves in water before this PhysicistQuery (talk) 14:09, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

"nonlinear effects are always much smaller than the linear ones"

This is a rather stupid thing to say. There is always an intensity ("the nonlinear regime") such that I*n_2 > n_0 and/or L_NL < L_D. Either would contradict the quoted text, and this is precisely the regime that we are working within. It makes me wonder if the associated derivation is even valid. 2001:480:91:FF00:0:0:0:16 (talk) 17:30, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I had to go look it up to see what you mean. You're right it's there. I can imagine that they are stating it as an assumption in order to use the approximation that follows, but the way they state it does seem presumptuous. I mean, the I (intensity) is right there in (n + n2*I). Of course the 2nd term isn't always smaller than the first term for all "I". Maybe it's just true in the lab, for practical reasons, that solitons form at fairly low intensities and become washed out by higher-order nonlinear effects when the intensity is high enough that the small-nonlinear-effect approximation is no longer valid. 2603:8080:2B00:11D4:14C0:2FA3:B409:E33C (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2024 (UTC)