Abstract

The spontaneous creation of spatial patterns in optical beams propagating in nonlinear media has been the subject of considerable research1. Of particular interest to us has been the formation of stable optical beams or spatial solitons since they may have some relevance to optical switching if the trajectory of those solitons is controllable. In a 3-D geometry bright soliton solutions for a Ken-law medium are unstable, however, bright solitons can exist when the nonlinearity saturates as is the case for many media such as Rubidium metal vapour used in our experiments. As a result it is possible to study 3-D bright soliton behaviour in such a medium and observe phenomena such as phase-dependent soliton attraction or repulsion2: phenomena which are analogous to those observed in Kerr-media.

© 1996 Optical Society of America