Abstract
Alkali vapors excited by light near resonance are known to possess very large nonlinear-optical coefficients n2, which can have either sign depending on the sign of the detuning. Transverse spatial solitons can result from such nonlinearities. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) obeyed by these solitons is formally equivalent to a non relativistic many-body field theory, in which photons behave like non- relativistic bosons with pairwise interactions. In one dimension, the Bethe-ansatz method yields exact solutions to this interacting many-body problem. When n2 is positive, these interactions are attractive; when n2 is negative, they are repulsive. At the classical level, with n2 positive, it is predicted that a self-trapped, one-dimensional spatial soliton (the hyperbolic-secant solution to the one-dimensional NLS) should be observable, and we plan to perform soliton-soliton-collision experiments with such solitons in a nonlinear Fabry-Perot interferometer.
© 1993 Optical Society of America
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