Manipulation of soliton ensembles by spectral filtering

Summary form only given. Solitons in optical fibers are as close to unbreakable as light pulses ever get. They can be formed from a wide range of initial conditions. They survive severe perturbations like collisions with one another, spectral filtering, or even attenuation with subsequent amplification-in other words, they exhibit particle-like properties. Their remarkable stability makes them promising as bits of optical information.