Abstract
AlGaAs is an attractive material system for the study of the dynamics of Kerr spatial solitons, having a nonlinear coefficient ~1000 times that of silica around the communication wavelength of 1.55 μm. However, there are several differences between AlGaAs and silica when the polarization dependence of nonlinear refraction is considered. Cubic semiconductors can display an anisotropic third-order nonlin-earity1 (although in terms of linear optics they are nonbirefringent) and are also usually exploited in the vicinity of an optical resonance (e.g., just below the half-bandgap), so that Kleinmann symmetry cannot be assumed. On considering the propagation of two orthogonal polarization components in such a medium, one obtains not only self-phase modulation, cross-phase modulation, and four-wave mixing, but now with an orientation dependence, but also an additional three terms that only contribute in anisotropic media.2
© 1998 Optical Society of America
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