title: Soliton polarization dynamics in fiber lasers passively mode-locked by the nonlinear polarization rotation technique.
abstract: By numerically solving the coupled laser Ginzburg-Landau equations and using the pulse tracing technique to incorporate the cavity effect in the simulation, we have explicitly calculated the soliton polarization ellipses throughout the cavity of a fiber-ring laser mode-locked by the nonlinear polarization rotation technique, and investigated the soliton polarization dynamics in laser cavities. It was found that in a conventional stable soliton operation state, although the soliton polarization varies as the pulse propagates, at a fixed position inside the laser cavity the soliton polarization is invariant with time. However, in the presence of laser dynamics, at a fixed location within the cavity the soliton could either have multiple alternating fixed polarization states or no fixed polarization state at all, depending on the soliton dynamics.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: D Y
authors.initials: DY
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Chan