Dark Optical Solitons: Physics and Applications

We present a detailed overview of the physics and applications of optical dark solitons: localized nonlinear waves (or ‘holes’) existing on a stable continuous wave (or extended finite-width) background. Together with the traditional problems involving properties of dark solitons of the defocusing cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation, we also describe recent theoretical results on optical vortex solitons; ring dark solitons; polarization domain walls; parametric dark solitons in a dispersive s(2) medium; vector dark solitons; coupled dark—bright soliton pairs, and we discuss the 0370-1573/98/$19.00 Copyright ( 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S 0 3 7 0 1 5 7 3 ( 9 7 ) 0 0 0 7 3 2 instability-induced dynamics of dark solitons in the models of generalized (i.e., non-Kerr) optical nonlinearities. Special attention is paid to the experimental demonstrations of temporal dark solitons in optical fibres and spatial dark solitons, especially dark-soliton stripes and vortex solitons, in a defocusing bulk medium. ( 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights