We present the first experimental observation of multihump multimode solitons in nature. In a broader perspective, this is the first observation of a multihumped multimode self-trapped wave packet propagating in a dispersive nonlinear medium. Double- and triple-humped spatial profiles are found by incoherent population of two modes of the beams' self-induced waveguide (self-induced potential well).

• Received 17 December 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.4657