Spatial soliton optical switches: a soliton-based equivalent particle approach

The spatial soliton plays a fundamental role as a robust, particle-like object which can be manipulated to switch or spatially scan collimated light channels or optical pulses which are incident at an oblique angle to an interface separating two or more selffocusing Kerr slab dielectrics. The underlying equivalent particle/multiparticle theory can also be employed to predict stability properties of nonlinear surface or guided waves, to derive an analytic expression for the nonlinear Goos-Hanchen shift at a nonlinear interface and to quantify the effect of material diffusion, linear and twophoton absorption on the switching behaviour of the light beam. Pulsed spatial switching effects are studied in order to illustrate the general predictive power of the equivalent particle theory.