Stable propagation of the Poincaré polarization solitons in strongly nonlocal media

Abstract

Abstract We report the first experimental observation of spatial solitons with complex polarization states, called the Poincaré polarization solitons (PPSs) in lead glass with strongly nonlocal nonlinearity. The formations of PPSs with topological charge of l = 1, including the cylindrical elliptical-polarization soliton (CEPS) and the angularly-hybrid polarization soliton (AHPS), were observed. We showed that the annular profiles and the complex polarization distributions of the first-order PPSs can be remained. Based on the linear stability analysis, we proved that the first-order PPSs are fully stable and the second-order PPS can survive only when one of the two component vortices dominates.