Abstract

The (1+1)-D spatial soliton dragging interaction has been shown numerically to provide large gain with high gate contrast [1, 2] for optical switching applications, and is the spatial analog of temporal dragging in a fiber [3]. In order to retain the best features of both (1+1)-D spatial (short interaction lengths and ease of output state discrimination) and temporal (low energies) solitons, we must look at the dragging interaction between higher-dimensional spatio-temporal solitary waves, such as (3+1)-D light-bullets [4] or their reduced-dimensional counterparts: the (2+1)-D solitary waves in a waveguide. The numerical simulation of (2+1)-D solitary-wave dragging presented here is based upon a vector extension to the split-step algorithm using the exact linear propagation function including the full dispersion relation and nonparaxiality [5].

© 1996 Optical Society of America