Dark solitons in mode-locked lasers

TL;DR

This paper investigates dark soliton formation in mode-locked lasers using a comprehensive model that accounts for gain, filtering, and loss saturation, aligning well with experimental observations and also describing bright pulses.

Contribution

It introduces a power-energy saturation model that accurately predicts dark soliton formation and describes both dark and bright pulses in various dispersive regimes.

Findings

Dark solitons form from general initial conditions under specific criteria.

The model accurately reproduces experimental dark soliton pulses.

The framework also describes bright pulses in different dispersion regimes.

Abstract

Dark soliton formation in mode-locked lasers is investigated by means of a power-energy saturation model which incorporates gain and filtering saturated with energy, and loss saturated with power. It is found that general initial conditions evolve into dark solitons under appropriate requirements also met in the experimental observations. The resulting pulses are well approximated by dark solitons of the unperturbed nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation. Notably, the same framework also describes bright pulses in anomalous and normally dispersive lasers.