Abstract

Self - actions of light beams in photorefractive media have attracted significant interest recently. Similar phenomena, like nonlinear optical surface waves [1], spatial solitons [2], self - focusing and self - defocusing effects can be realized in photorefractive materials at optical powers some orders less than in Kerr media. It makes possible applications of these effects to needs of optically - controlled photonic elements, optical interconnects and memories. Photorefractive optical waveguides suggest in that way some additional advantages compared with basic 3D media. It is due to the potential larger concentration of active impurities provided by surface doping, the possibility to combine different dopants within separate areas of the same sample, larger light intensity within waveguides. Besides, nonuniform light fields and photorefractive properties over waveguide depth can result a number of effects having no analogs in bulk configurations [3,4]. In this work some features of confined light beam self - actions in lithium niobate optical waveguides doped by Fe and Cu are experimentally investigated and discussed.

© 1996 Optical Society of America