Bifurcations of the dark soliton and polarization domain walls in nonlinear dispersive media

Abstract
A bifurcation analysis of the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations that govern light propagation in Kerr media reveals the existence of a novel type of vector dark solitary waves. These solutions consist of a localized structure separating two uniform background waves of the same amplitude but opposite circular polarizations and constitute therefore polarization domain walls.