Abstract

Stable self-trapping of monochromatic laser light as soliton beams inside self-induced waveguides is known to arise when suitable field distributions and intensities propagate through planar waveguides, the refractive index of which exhibit the optical KERR nonlinearity. This was demonstrated as well in thin films of liquid CS₂, many years ago, as well as more recently in semiconductor- doped planar glass waveguides. The first observations of higher-order self-trapped patterns will be recalled, with emphasis on present limits of the agreement between theory and experiment (the theoretically well-established periodicity of higher-order soliton beams was not yet demonstrated experimentally).

© 1992 Optical Society of America