Theory of dark optical solitons

Abstract

We study the quantum fluctuations about a dark soliton generated in a photon fluid confined in a Kerr-effect nonlinear microcavity. Semiclassical quantization imposes quantization conditions that lend a particle interpretation to the fluctuations. A Bogoliubov-de Gennes analysis complements this view by yielding the single-particle energies and wave functions. The zero modes are found to correspond to the background while the scattering solutions to the notch. We compute the mass associated with the soliton. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.