title: Optical solitons: Perspectives and applications.
abstract: This article serves as an introduction to the focus issue on optical solitons. After a short review of the history of solitons and the field of integrable systems, a brief overview of the development of nonlinear optics and optical solitons is provided. Next, the various contributions to this focus issue are presented, and a few separate remarks are devoted to optical communications, where solitons promise to play a decisive role in the next generation of commercial systems. (c) 2000 American Institute of Physics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado, Campus Box 526, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0526.
authors.forename: Mark J.
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Ablowitz
authors.forename: Gino
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Biondini
authors.forename: Lev A.
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Ostrovsky