A prince for the sleeping beauty - NFT for soliton signal processing

The soliton, the eigen-solution of nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE), has been investigated in many branches of physics. The first prediction of a soliton in optical fiber could be dated back to 1973. Since then, numerous theoretical and experimental works on solitons have been carried out, including soliton communication and soliton generation in fiber lasers. However, due to the constraints of hardware and digital signal processing methods, research on solitons have been stalled for decades. Recently, the nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT) has attracted significant attention in the field of optical fiber communications and soliton-based signal processing, which provides a powerful mathematical framework for analyzing and understanding the behavior of solitons in optical fibers, enabling the development of novel signal processing techniques. The NFT technique has brought the soliton back to life. It has been widely recognized that in nonlinear frequency domain, the nonlinear crosstalk resulting from the Kerr effect is practically negligible, and fiber nonlinearity damage caused by the Kerr effect can be accounted for as a linear transform factor. Moreover, NFT has been demonstrated for the analysis of laser radiation, highlighting its potential in characterizing ultrafast pulses in the nonlinear frequency domain. In this submission, we review the advancements of NFT concerning both in soliton communication and characterization, focusing on practical implementation aspects. With many practical implementation aspects still being open, our mini review is aimed to assist researchers in evaluating the potential, identifying challenges, and envisioning future directions in NFT-based signal processing technologies. And wake up the sleeping beauty – the soliton!