Abstract

Numerical and analytical investigation of stability and collisions of bright spatial 2-d solitons in self-focusing media with saturable nonlinearity was carried out. Preliminary research of interaction and merging of such solitons was performed in [1]. This is proof that the nearest to fundamental mode vortex with topological index M = 1 is unstable in respect to small perturbations of its shape. Under the action of angular perturbations the vortex decays to some fundamental solitons. These solitons have been rotating about an axis of beam for some time after decay. Therefore only fundamental cylindrically symmetric mode can be treated as a true soliton. Dependence of spatial soliton effective radius on its power is not monotoneous. There is minimum radius of the soliton.

© 1996 IEEE