Review: Dark pulse generation in fiber laser system

Abstract

A decade ago, dark pulse was defined as “A solution looking for a problem”. To date, dark pulse has proven its potential in telecommunication, sensing and other industries. Dark pulse exhibits extraordinary propagation properties which draws research interest in dark pulse as a replacement for bright pulse. The research on development of dark pulse was slow after it was firstly demonstrated as it required careful selection of laser cavity parameters. Nevertheless, the interest in dark pulse is gaining attention lately with the emergence of saturable absorber (SA). Here, we present a detailed review on experiments conducted to generate dark pulse and subsequently to classify them accordingly as Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation (NLSE) dark pulse, Cubic-Quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (CQNLSE) dark pulse and domain wall (DW) dark pulse. The formations of these dark pulses are also elaborated theoretically. We concluded this review by discussing on the challenges on dark pulse generation as well as the future research direction on dark pulse.