Abstract

Optical domain walls (DW) correspond to a localized structure of the kink type that connects two regions of space with different polarizations [1]. In such a symbiotic system, the fast polarization knots lead to two anticorrelated coupled twin-waves for which the strong binding force imposed by cross-phase modulation (XPM) can compensate for the classical defocusing regime. In this contribution, we report a direct observation of polarization domain walls (PDWs) propagating within a standard optical fiber commonly used in optical communications [2]. We exploit their topological properties to overcome the nonlinear Kerr-limits usually imposed in normally dispersive fibers for optical data transmission.

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