Abstract

Self-trapped optical solitons were proposed from the early days of nonlinear optics and their demonstration based on the third-order nonlinearity have been reported in both the temporal and spatial regimes. ^1-3 Recently it has been predicted that a cascaded second-order nonlinearity can produce effects similar to third-order nonlinearities with orders of magnitude higher nonlinear phase shifts. In fact, large nonlinear phase shifts have already been reported.^4-5 Presented here is the first demonstration of spatial solitons due to the cascaded second-order nonlinearity.

© 1995 Optical Society of America