Abstract

Optical vortex solitons have been the subject of a significant amount of recent interest [1-4], a result of their potential for use in all-optical information processing devices. This potential is based on the waveguiding properties of optical solitons, which, for the vortex, allows fibre-like structures to be written into a self-defocusing medium. These structures can then serve as steerable conduits for information carrying beams, as has been demonstrated with spatial solitons in planar geometry [5,6]. However, the optical vortex soliton has an additional spatial degree of freedom over its planar counterparts, implying a greater choice of possible device configurations. In this paper we will introduce an approximate model for the motion of vortex solitons nested in arbitrary carrying fields. This model will be applied to the case of a vortex in a defocused laser beam and then compared with simulation and experiment. A useful method of steering vortex solitons, partially based on these results, will then be discussed.

© 1996 Optical Society of America