Abstract

By colliding two self-guided beams (solitons), we generate one, two, three, four, or possibly more stable solitons for a broad class of nonlinear material that spans threshold to power-law nonlinearities. This reproduction is shown to depend critically on beam stability, on the standard waveguide parameter V, and on a scaled angular beam separation θ/θ_c. The beams can also annihilate one another or create a stable beam from two unstable beams. Beam steering is possible by differentially changing soliton power or phase. Also, the colliding solitons induce versatile optical devices for the switching and steering of small-signal beams.

© 1993 Optical Society of America

Fusion and birth of spatial solitons upon collision

Wiesław Królikowski and Scott A. Holmstrom
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Asymmetric optical Y junctions and switching of weak beams by using bright spatial-soliton collisions

G. E. Torres-Cisneros, J. J. Sánchez-Mondragón, and V. A. Vysloukh
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Birth of solitons in quadratic spatial soliton collisions

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Spatial solitons of the power-law nonlinearity

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Incoherent collisions between two-dimensional bright steady-state photorefractive spatial screening solitons

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