Stable propagation of the Poincaré polarization solitons in strongly nonlocal media

Abstract

We report the first experimental observation of spatial solitons with complex polarization states, called the Poincar'{e} 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.