Observation of doubly periodic solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in optical fibers

We report the first, to the best of our knowledge, experimental observation of doubly periodic first-order solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in optical fibers. We confirm, experimentally, the existence of A-type and B-type solutions. This is done by using the initial conditions that consist of a strong pump and two weak sidebands. The evolution of power and phase of the main spectral components is recorded using heterodyne time-domain reflectometry. Another important part of our experiment is active loss compensation. We reach a good agreement between theory and experiment.