Abstract

Conventionally, pulse generation in passively mode-locked fiber lasers is promoted by a fast saturable absorber. However, if the experimentalist happens to remove the fast saturable absorber element, the fiber laser can still manifest pulsations at the cavity round-trip frequency, although much weaker and surrounded by an important noise level. These self-pulsations comprise polarization-switching states [1]. The interpretation of the anti-phase polarization dynamics is still controversial, as no simple physical model has been developed to date. In that spirit, the analogy of the polarization-switching dynamics with the formation of polarization-domain-wall (PDW) solitary waves was recently suggested [2,3].

© 2013 IEEE