Universitat Rostock, Germany

Fiber-optic solitons were predicted in 1973, demonstrated in 1980, and found their first commercial use in 2002. One might consider the topic mature and well understood, but nonlinear processes always hold surprises, and current research keeps producing novelties. Soliton formation from a noisy continuous wave will be discussed in terms of an Akhmediev breather. Moreover, investigations into bound states of solitons (soliton molecules) will be presented; these objects have been shown in 2012 to permit nonbinary optical data coding.