Abstract

A lot of theoretical and experimental work has been done this last decade on single spatial soliton propagation and twin-soliton interactions in planar Kerr waveguides, as it is well known that Kerr solitons can only be stable in a (1+1)D geometry^[1]. The (1+1)D nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) that governs soliton propagation also governs modulational instability (Ml), a parametric wave mixing process which amplifies, spatially speaking, weak transverse perturbations or periodic modulations of an intense homogeneous plane wave in a nonlinear diffractive medium. Such exponential growth of spatial frequency sidebands may lead to the generation of periodic arrays of soliton beams^[2].

© 2000 IEEE