It is predicted theoretically and observed experimentally a novel type of the soliton transverse instability, a breakup of a vector-soliton stripe into an array of the dipole-mode vector solitons.

Abstract: We develop a theory of modulational instability of multiparameter solitary waves and analyze the transverse instability of composite (or vector) optical solitons in a saturable nonlinear medium. We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally that a soliton stripe breaks up into an array of (2+1)-dimensional dipole-mode vector solitons, thus confirming the robust nature of those solitons as fundamental composite structures of incoherently coupled fields.

Keywords: modulational instability; media; propagation; stability; plasmas; beams

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