Solitons are stable localized wave packets that can propagate long distance in dispersive media without changing their shapes. As particle-like nonlinear localized waves, solitons have been investigated in different physical systems. Owing to potential applications in optical communication and optical signal processing systems, optical solitons have attracted intense interest in the past three decades. To experimentally study the formation and dynamics of temporal optical solitons, fiber lasers are considered as a wonderful nonlinear system. During the last decade, several kinds of theoretically predicted solitons were observed experimentally in fiber lasers. In this review, we present a detailed overview of the experimentally verified optical solitons in fiber lasers, including bright solitons, dark solitons, vector solitons, dissipative solitons, dispersion-managed solitons, polarization domain wall solitons, and so on. An outlook for the development on the solitons in fiber lasers is also provided and discussed.

Antimonene, a new type of mono/few-layer two-dimensional (2D) mono-elemental material purely consisting of antimony similar as graphene and phosphorene, has been theoretically predicted with excellent optical response and enhanced stability. Herein, we experimentally investigated the broadband nonlinear optical response of highly stable few-layer antimonene (FLA) by performing an open-aperture Z-scan laser measurement. Thanks to the direct bandgap and resonant absorption at the telecommunication band, we demonstrated the feasibility of FLA-decorated microfiber not only as an optical saturable absorber for ultrafast photonics operation, but also as a stable all-optical pulse thresholder that can effectively suppress the transmission noise, boost the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and reshape the deteriorated input signal. Our findings, as the first prototypic device of absorption of antimonene, might facilitate the development of antimonene-based optical communication technologies towards high stability and practical applications in the future.

We report on the optical saturable absorption of few-layer black phosphorus nanoflakes and demonstrate its application for the generation of vector solitons in an erbium-doped fiber laser. By incorporating the black phosphorus nanoflakes-based saturable absorber (SA) into an all-fiber erbium-doped fiber laser cavity, we are able to obtain passive mode-locking operation with soliton pulses down to ~670 fs. The properties and dynamics of the as-generated vector solitons are experimentally investigated. Our results show that BP nanoflakes could be developed as an effective SA for ultrashort pulse fiber lasers, particularly for the generation of vector soliton pulses in fiber lasers.

Bismuthene has attracted a great deal of attention because of its unique electronic and optical properties. However, there are few reported applications of bismuthene in nonlinear optical applications. In this research, a dissipative soliton ytterbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser at 1 μm regime with a bismuthene saturable absorber (SA) by using evanescent field interaction for the first time is demonstrated. The nonlinear optical absorption of microfiber-based bismuthene SA is shown experimentally by using a homemade ultrafast fiber laser, whose saturation intensity and modulation depth are about 13 MW cm⁻² and 2.2%, respectively. Relying on the excellent nonlinear optical property of the bismuthene SA, the typical dissipative solitons with a repetition rate of 21.74 MHz are generated at a center wavelength of 1034.4 nm. The time-bandwidth product of the pulse is about 23.07 with a pulse width of 30.25 ps. The results demonstrate that bismuthene is a good candidate for application in a 1 μm wave-breaking-free mode-locked fiber laser and nonlinear photonic components.