COLLISIONS OF DARK SOLITONS IN OPTICAL FIBERS

We report numerical simulations that lay the groundwork for possible experiments aimed at the observation of dark soliton collisions. Such experiments would confirm that one can synthesize the appropriate phase functions to launch gray solitons and would test whether an actual collision is adequately described by the nonlinear Schrodinger equation. Our simulations include the effects of a finite-width background pulse and of the Raman contribution to the nonlinear index. We conclude that the observation of dark soliton collisions in optical fibers should be possible, and we indicate suitable experimental parameters.