Abstract

Spatial solitons, which in a nonlinear Kerr medium arise when the field-induced changes of refractive index compensate for an effect of diffraction, were successfully demonstrated experimentally [1-2]. Although the fundamental soliton propagation has been clearly demonstrated, the experiment seemed to fail for higher-order soliton propagation [2]. In this contribution we show that normal temporal dispersion may be responsible for the observed discrepancy between experiment [2] and theory [3].

© 1996 Optical Society of America