Experimental evidence for soliton explosions.

We show, experimentally and numerically, that Ti:sapphire mode-locked lasers can operate in a regime in which they intermittently produce exploding solitons. This happens when the laser operates near a critical point. Explosions happen spontaneously, but external perturbations can trigger them. In stable operation, all explosions have similar features, but are not identical. The characteristics of the explosions depend on the intracavity dispersion.