SPATIAL SOLITON SWITCHING MODES OF NONLINEAR OPTICAL SLAB WAVE-GUIDES

A planar nonlinear waveguide, consisting of a linear substrate, a linear film, and a Kerr-type cladding and end-fire excited by the TE0 mode of a linear planar waveguide, is studied both numerically and analytically (by means of the equivalent-particle model). It is shown that a switching device whose output is controlled by the input optical power can operate not only in the well-known soliton-breakup mode but also in a low-power mode. Furthermore, the device is shown to be highly sensitive to ak0, the product of the guide half-width times the wave number of the incoming beam.