Harmonic Mode-Locking in Bidirectional Domain-Wall Soliton Fiber Lasers

We report on the first experimental observation of passively harmonic mode-locking (HML) in a bidirectional domain-wall dark-soliton fiber laser. The domain-wall solitons (DWSs) are characterized, in which, the strong coupling between the two directions takes great responsibility for the generation. By appropriately altering the polarization state in the cavity, the stable fundamental domain-wall solitons and HML states could be obtained and switched with increasing the pump power. In our experiment, the repetition rate can be tunable from the fundamental mode locking of 2.96 MHz up to eighth-order HML of 23.68 MHz when the pump power is increased from 120 to 542.5 mW. Importantly, this HML operation of dark-pulse DWSs confirms that the DWSs are the intrinsic feature of the mode- locked lasers, as well as the conventional bright solitons. This work could provide a new perspective to the understanding of the formation and transformation of dark solitons, which may also find great potential applications in fiber sensing and future optical communication systems.