Stable polarization-locked temporal vector solitons are found in a saturable absorber mode-locked fiber laser with weak cavity birefringence. The system is theoretically modeled with two coupled complex Ginzburg-Landau equations that include fiber birefringence, spectral filtering, saturable gain, and slow saturable absorption. The solutions to this system are similar to those for elliptically polarized vector solitons in a lossless birefringent fiber. Numerical simulations show qualitative agreement with experimental results. © 2000 Optical Society of America.

The work of J. Soto-Crespo was supported by the Direccio´n General de Ensen`anza Superior under contract PB96-0819. K. Bergman and B. Collings acknowledge support from the Office of Naval Research grant N00014- 96-0773 and the National Science Foundation grant ECS- 9502491.

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