This Letter reports experimental results on random temporal dark solitons. One excites an incoherent large-amplitude propagating spin-wave packet in a ferromagnetic film strip with a repulsive, instantaneous nonlinearity. One then observes the random formation of dark solitons from this wave packet. The solitons appear randomly in time and in position relative to the entire wave packet. They can be gray or black. In spite of the randomness of the initial wave packets and the random formation processes, the solitons show signatures that are found for conventional coherent dark solitons.

• Received 25 March 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.037207