Abstract

Non-Kerr spatial solitons are the building blocks to an all-optical, virtual circuitry, technology, whereby light can guide, steer and manipulate light in a bulk nonlinear material¹. In this paper, I concentrate on bright solitons. These are free standing beams that are localized in space. In particular, I discuss some recent predictions including: splitting a strong (soliton) beam with a weak (signal) beam, the propagation of beams in nonlinear materials with an arbitrary amount of spatial nonlocality and new findings about big incoherent solitons - those launched by a diffuse illumination as recently observed by Mitchell and Segev² and studied theoretically by Christodoulides, et al³.

© 1998 Optical Society of America