Supercontinuum to solitons: New nonlinear structures in fiber propagation

We review our recent work in the field of optical rogue wave physics and applications. Beginning from a brief survey of the well-known noise and incoherence processes in optical fiber supercontinuum generation, we trace the links to recent developments in studying the emergence of high contrast localised breather structures in both spontaneous and induced nonlinear instabilities. In the latter case, we discuss our recent measurements that have reported the experimental observation of the Peregrine soliton, a unique class of rational soliton predicted to exist over 25 years ago and never previously observed.