Optical solitons: Perspectives and applications

This article serves as an introduction to the focus issue on optical solito ns. After a short review of the history of solitons and the field of integr able systems, a brief overview of the development of nonlinear optics and o ptical solitons is provided. Next, the various contributions to this focus issue are presented, and a few separate remarks are devoted to optical comm unications, where solitons promise to play a decisive role in the next gene ration of commercial systems. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S105 4-1500(00)02303-X].