Fig. 4: IXC imaging of SM dynamics in a quasi-stable triatomic, and unstable tetratomic state.

a Amplified IXC signal acquired over 1 second, when the LUT was operated in the quasi-stable triatomic SM state. Subsequent panels show zoomed portions of the signal revealing the existence of 3 isolated pulses. b Imaging soliton molecule trajectory, where slight, sub-ps variations of the TS are visible. An analogously-long DFT waveform (1 s) measured using a 5 GHz 8-bit oscilloscope would have a size of ~10 GB, while the 12-bit 50 MHz bandwidth IXC dataset occupies 360 MB. Segmented acquisition in a narrower temporal span (to several microseconds each frame) may lower the size to ~1 MB. c Zoom of (b), which shows nearly-constant peak intensities. d Optical spectrum with a strong 1.2–1.3-nm-period modulation (~161 GHz) due to the presence of three bound pulses. e Radio-frequency (RF) spectrum measured by an InGaAs photodetector. It is nearly the same for panels (f–i). f IXC image of an unstable tetratomic molecule (quadruplet), with competition-like behavior between the pulses. g Zoom of the framed part showing the rapidly oscillating intensities of the SM pulses, in stark contrast to (b). h Optical spectrum acquired in parallel with IXC, which shows a dynamic evolution of the fringe contrast and noise-like envelope. i 4 slices of the IXC image in the region pointed by arrow in (g).