Vector soliton fiber lasers

Abstract

Solitons, as stable localized wave packets that can propagate long distance

in dispersive media without changing their shapes, are ubiquitous in nonlinear

physical systems. Since the first experimental realization of optical bright solitons

in the anomalous dispersion single mode fibers (SMF) by Mollenauer et al. in 1980

and optical dark solitons in the normal dispersion SMFs by P. Emplit et al. in 1987,

optical solitons in SMFs had been extensively investigated. In reality a SMF

always supports two orthogonal polarization modes. Taking fiber birefringence into

account, it was later theoretically predicted that various types of vector solitons,

including the bright-bright vector solitons, dark-dark vector solitons and darkbright

vector solitons, could be formed in SMFs. However, except the bright-bright

type of vector solitons, other types of vector solitons are so far lack of clear

experimental evidence.

Optical solitons have been observed not only in the SMFs but also in mode

locked fiber lasers. It has been shown that the passively mode-locked erbiumdoped

fiber lasers offer a promising experimental platform for studying the scalar

optical solitons. Vector solitons can also be formed in mode locked fiber lasers. In

this dissertation, the author presents results of a series of theoretical and

experimental investigations on the vector solitons in fiber lasers.

First of all, passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasers with the

semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a mode locker were designed

and constructed. Formation of various vector bright-bright solitons in the fiber

lasers was demonstrated, and whose features and dynamics were investigated.

There are either the coherently or incoherently coupled vector solitons in the fiber

lasers.