Abstract

Cavity solitons are similar to spatial solitons but arise in dissipative systems, which bestows them special properties They are generated by shining short and narrow laser pulses into resonant cavities filled with nonlinear samples of large section, and driven by a cw coherent holding beam The cavity soliton, which appears as a bright spot in the transverse intensity profile, persists after the passage of the pulse, until it is switched off by another pulse The motion of cavity solitons is governed by the transverse configuration of the holding beam, e.g a modulated profile allows to realise arrays of spatial solitons which are easily reconfigurable, while constant gradients lead to a drift of the solitons with uniform velocity [1]

© 2000 IEEE