Abstract

Experimentalists have produced all-optical switches capable of 100-fs responses [1]. Also, there are experimental observations [2] and theoretical calculations [3] of spatial soliton interactions. To adequately model such effects, nonlinearities in optical materials [4] (both instantaneous and dispersive) must be included. In principle, the behavior of electromagnetic fields in nonlinear dielectrics can be determined by solving Maxwell's equations subject to the assumption that the electric polarization has a nonlinear relation to the electric field. However, until our previous work [5 - 8], the resulting nonlinear Maxwell's equations have not been solved directly. Rather, approximations have been made that result in a class of generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equations (GNLSE) [9] that solve only for the envelope of the optical pulses.

© 1993 Optical Society of America