Abstract

Solitons occur in optical fibres with the propagation of short pulses in the negative group velocity dispersion regime. Solitons have the important property of dispersionless propagation and also behave in many respects as single entities. Nonlinear devices designed for optical switching respond to local intensities and thus do not function efficiently for typical ultrashort pulse envelopes. The device described here exploits the ’particle’ nature of solitons to produce excellent switching characteristics for entire pulses and also serves to illustrate the necessity for using solitons as the essential ’bits’ in ultrafast optical devices.

© 1987 Optical Society of America