Recent progress of study on optical solitons in fiber lasers

TLDR

Solitons are stable localized wave packets that can propagate long distances in dispersive media without changing shape, and have been studied across various physical systems; their potential for optical communication and signal processing has spurred intense interest over the past three decades. This review surveys experimentally verified optical solitons in fiber lasers—bright, dark, vector, dissipative, dispersion‑managed, and polarization domain wall solitons—and discusses future developments. The review compiles experimental observations of these soliton types in fiber lasers, outlining their key properties and underlying mechanisms. Over the past decade, multiple theoretically predicted soliton types have been experimentally observed in fiber lasers.

Abstract

Solitons are stable localized wave packets that can propagate long distance in dispersive media without changing their shapes. As particle-like nonlinear localized waves, solitons have been investigated in different physical systems. Owing to potential applications in optical communication and optical signal processing systems, optical solitons have attracted intense interest in the past three decades. To experimentally study the formation and dynamics of temporal optical solitons, fiber lasers are considered as a wonderful nonlinear system. During the last decade, several kinds of theoretically predicted solitons were observed experimentally in fiber lasers. In this review, we present a detailed overview of the experimentally verified optical solitons in fiber lasers, including bright solitons, dark solitons, vector solitons, dissipative solitons, dispersion-managed solitons, polarization domain wall solitons, and so on. An outlook for the development on the solitons in fiber lasers is also provided and discussed.