Abstract

Solitons and soliton collisions were described by Zahkarov and Shabat¹ in 1972, and shown to be possible in optical fibers by Hasegawa² in 1973. Two solitons with different center frequencies propagating in the same direction can collide, as they have different group velocities. Such two-color soliton collisions are different than soliton collisions with identical frequencies.³ The two solitons emerging from a two-color soliton collision experience phase and timing shifts determined by the energies of the solitons. As a result, soliton collisions may be useful for quantum non-demolition measurements of photon number^4,5 and in ultrafast optical logic devices. In addition, they are a limiting factor in multi-frequency soliton communication systems.

© 1990 Optical Society of America