Abstract

Dark soliton stripes (DSS's) have been experimentally observed in self-defocusing nonlinear refractive media.¹ Based on our numerical simulations, we have demonstrated that when the wavelength of intense modulations is at least a few times the soliton width, DSS's become unstable. Only the fundamental dark soliton stripes are immune from the instability due to transverse modulations. Our results are consistent with recent analytical results.² The onset of instability and evolution of DSS's, which are generated by a long wire or a wire tapered at both ends, are investigated. Intense sinusoidal modulations are artificially introduced in the long wire case, whereas in the tapered wire case transverse modulations are generated naturally by the tapered ends. In both cases, vortex pairs appear after a long propagation length near the locations of maximum modulations; otherwise DSS's are stable or decay adiabatically. Numerical results were obtained by using the Cray YMP computer at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

© 1992 Optical Society of America