Vector Dark Soliton
Dark solitons are characterized by being formed from a localized reduction of intensity compared to a more intense continuous wave background. Scalar dark solitons (linearly polarized dark solitons) can be formed in all normal dispersion fiber lasers mode-locked by the nonlinear polarizaiton rotation method and can be rather stable. Vector dark solitons are much less stable due to the cross-interaction between the two polarization components. Therefore it is interesting to investigate how the polarization state of these two polarization components evolves.
In 2009, the first dark soliton fiber laser has been successfully achieved in an all-normal dispersion erbium-doped fiber laser with a polarizer in cavity. Experimentally finding that apart from the bright pulse emission, under appropriate conditions the fiber laser could also emit single or multiple dark pulses. Based on numerical simulations we interpret the dark pulse formation in the laser as a result of dark soliton shaping.
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