Abstract

Self-guided optical beams (or spatial solitons) have attracted significant research interest because they offer the possibility of all-optical switching and controlling light by light (see, e.g., [1]). During the last few years it has been realised that quadratic nonlinearity is particularly attractive for potential practical realizations of all-optical switching, not only supporting stable solitons both in planar waveguides and bulk media, but also providing ultra-fast electronic nonlinear response (see, e.g., [2]).

© 1999 Optical Society of America