Stable counter-rotating vortex pairs in saturable media

We resolve a controversial issue of the stability of composite vortex solitons in self-focusing saturable nonlinear media. Stable vortex solitons with hidden angular momentum, i.e., composed of counter-rotating beams with topological charges +1 and −1, are found, and their linear-stability region is identified. In contrast, the solitons with explicit vorticity are always unstable against splitting. The predicted linear stability of the hidden-vorticity solitons is achieved in the strong-saturation regime, when the soliton's total power exceeds a certain threshold. The dynamical stability is verified in direct simulations of nonlinear model.