Abstract

Light solitons in space (spatial solitons) have been under an intensive theoretical and experimental research in the last three decades. The solitons evolve from nonlinear changes in the refractive index of the material, due to the light intensity distribution. When the modulation of the index confines the light beam in such a way that diffraction is compensated for exactly, the beam becomes self-trapped, and is called a spatial soliton. The nonlinear effects, which are responsible to soliton formation, are in general Kerr-like effects, causing local index changes proportional to the local light power. The index changes needed for spatial solitons require high power densities, and often exceed 1MWatt/cm² (see ref.[1]).

© 1991 Optical Society of America