All-optical switching of a signal by a pair of interacting nematicons

We investigate a power tunable junction formed by two interacting spatial solitons self-trapped in nematic liquid crystals. By launching a counter-propagating copolarized probe we assess the guided-wave behavior induced by the solitons and demonstrate a novel all-optical switch. Varying soliton powe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2012-10, Vol.20 (22), p.24701-24707
Main Authors: Izdebskaya, Ya V, Rebling, J, Desyatnikov, A S, Assanto, G, Kivshar, Yu S
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We investigate a power tunable junction formed by two interacting spatial solitons self-trapped in nematic liquid crystals. By launching a counter-propagating copolarized probe we assess the guided-wave behavior induced by the solitons and demonstrate a novel all-optical switch. Varying soliton power the probe gets trapped into one or two or three guided-waves by the soliton-induced index perturbation, an effect supported by the nonlocal nonlinearity.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.20.024701