Real-time measurements and simulations of incoherent supercontinuum dynamics and rogue waves in a noise-like pulse dissipative soliton fibre laser

Dissipative soliton lasers are widely used to generate stable ultrashort pulses, but they are also known to exhibit complex instabilities of great interest from a nonlinear dynamics perspective. A particular example is the "noise-like pulse" laser emitting sub-ps pulses that randomly evolve under a longer envelope. However, although this operation was first observed more than 20 years ago, it remains poorly understood. Here, we fill this gap and report experiments and modelling that reveal the underlying physics of broadband noise-like pulse operation in a cavity including highly nonlinear fibre. Our simulations reveal the key role of supercontinuum dynamics, and are in quantitative agreement with experiments using both real-time and time-averaged characterization techniques.