title: Azimuthally polarized spatial dark solitons: exact solutions of Maxwell's equations in a Kerr medium.
abstract: Spatial Kerr solitons, typically associated with the standard paraxial nonlinear Schro dinger equation, are shown to exist to all nonparaxial orders as exact solutions of Maxwell's equations in the presence of the vectorial Kerr effect. More precisely, we prove the existence of azimuthally polarized, spatial, dark soliton solutions of Maxwell's equations, while exact linearly polarized (2 + 1)D solitons do not exist. Our ab initio approach predicts the existence of dark solitons up to an upper value of the maximum field amplitude, corresponding to a minimum soliton width of about one-fourth of the wavelength.
authors.affiliation: Istituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, UdR Universitá dell'Aquila, 67010, L'Aquila, Italy. alessandro.ciattoni@aquila.infn.it
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ciattoni
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Crosignani
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Di Porto
authors.forename: Amnon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yariv