A Historical Narrative of Study of Fiber Grating Solitons

A brief historical narrative of the study of grating solitons in fiber Bragg grating is presented from the late 1970’s up to now. The formation of photogeneration gratings in optical fiber by sustained exposure of the core to the interference pattern produced by oppositely propagating modes of argon-ion laser radiation was first reported in 1978. One important nonlinear application of fiber Bragg grating is grating solitons, including gap soliton and Bragg soliton. This paper summarily introduces the numerous theoretical and experimental results on this field, each indicating the potential these solitons have in all-optical switching, pulse compression, limiting, and logic operations, and especially important for the optical communication systems.