Unveiling the complexity of spatiotemporal soliton molecules in real time

Observing the dynamics of 3D soliton molecules can hold great opportunities for unveiling the mechanism of molecular complexity and other nonlinear problems. In spite of this fantastic potential, real-time visualization of their dynamics occurring on femtosecond-to-picosecond time scales is still challenging, particularly when high-spatiotemporal-resolution and long-term observation are required. In this work, we observe the real-time speckle-resolved spectral-temporal dynamics of 3D soliton molecules for a long time interval using multispeckle spectral-temporal measurement technology. Diverse real-time dynamics of 3D soliton molecules are captured for the first time, including the speckle-resolved birth, spatiotemporal interaction, and internal vibration of 3D soliton molecules. Further studies show that nonlinear spatiotemporal coupling associated with a large average-chirp gradient over the speckled mode profile plays a significant role in these dynamics. These efforts may shed new light on decomposing the complexity of 3D soliton molecules, and create an analogy between 3D soliton molecules and chemical molecules.