Abstract

Optical spatial solitons in photorefractive media have attracted much attention recently due to possibility of their application in all optical switching processing [1]. Among three different types of photorefractive solitons the so called screening solitons are the most promising. In this case the externally applied biasing electric field is screened by charges generated in photorefractive crystal by the optical beam. The resulting static electric field modifies the refractive index in such a way that the beam is self-guided. It has been shown [2] that propagation of screening solitons can be described by the following equation

© 1996 Optical Society of America