Abstract

Solitons in optical fibers have been proposed for use in alloptical switches. When solitons in opposite polarization eigenstates collide in linearly birefringent fibers, as has been proposed in switch designs,¹ they emerge with shadows. In this work, shadows are studied. The shapes of the shadows can be described by an analytic formula based on the linearized equations. We show numerically that, given initial soliton amplitudes, the shadow amplitude decreases as the absolute value of the initial soliton separation increases. The shadow amplitude after a complete collision is about 10–15% of that after a half collision. For a given initial soliton separation, the shadow amplitude increases with the initial soliton amplitudes until the solitons become bounded, rather than passing through each other.

© 1992 Optical Society of America