Mechanisms of crossing for an X-junction based on dark spatial solitons

Abstract

We present a fundamental study on the capability of a crossing of two optical waveguides based on dark spatial solitons to act as a controllable optical beam splitter. Our study is based on the fact that the guided beam is diffracted at the waveguide crossing by an effective phase screen formed by the soliton collision profile. We find that when the two dark solitons are immersed into the same finite bright background, the energy of a guided beam can be split into the desired optical channel according to the collision angle. We also found that even the corresponding phase diffractive screen possesses a quite different structure in the bright and dark soliton cases; the physics involved is the same.

All-Optical Switches and Y-junction Waveguides Based on the Perpendicular Collisions of Photoisomerization Solitons

“…Optical spatial solitons have been widely suggested for all-optical switches and waveguides in optically nonlinear media [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. An optical spatial soliton forms when the nonlinear self-focusing effect exactly balances the natural diffraction [12].…”

“…A spatial soliton can create a waveguide structure to steer another optical beam. Interactions between solitons can make the refractive index structure more complex, and therefore some optical devices such as all-optical switch [9][10][11], X-junction [13] and Y-junction [6,14,15] can be expected.…”