Abstract

During the nineties, extensive investigations of theoretical, numerical and experimental nature have been performed on the phenomena of spontaneous formation of transverse patterns in nonlinear optical devices. In this field, one of the areas which is most promising in view of applications is that of cavity solitons (CS). They appear as isolated intensity peaks over a homogeneous background in the transverse profile of the radiation field, and can be generated by shining narrow laser pulses in a cavity filled with nonlinear material and driven by a homogeneous holding field. The independence of CS from one another, combined with the possibility of moving them by means of amplitude/phase gradients in the holding field, makes CS very interesting in view of possible applications to information processing.

© 2001 EPS