Abstract
We present first-time calculations from the time- domain vector Maxwell's equations of spatial optical soliton propagation and mutual deflection, including carrier waves, in a 2-D homogeneous Kerr-type nonlinear dielectric. The nonlinear Schrodinger equation predicts that two co-propagating, in-phase spatial solitons remain bound to each other, executing a periodic separation. This disagrees with our new extensively tested finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) solution of Maxwell’s equations. FD-TD shows that co-propagating in-phase spatial solitons become unbound, i.e. diverge to arbitrarily large separations, if the ratio of soliton beamwidth to wavelength is order 1 or less. Not relying upon paraxial approximations or analogies to temporal soliton interactions, FD-TD appears to be a robust means of obtaining detailed models of the interaction of sub-picosecond pulsed light beams in nonlinear media directly in the space-time domain.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1251-1254 |
Number of pages | 4 |
Journal | IEEE Photonics Technology Letters |
Volume | 6 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 1994 |
Externally published | Yes |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering