GENERATION OF 2-DIMENSIONAL, SPATIAL SOLITON-LIKE BEAMS BY LASER MODES IN A QUADRATIC MEDIUM

We demonstrate numerically that the focusing of beams that correspond to laser modes into a phase-matchable second-order nonlinear optical m edium can lead to the generation of a rich spectrum of quadratic solit ons. We also show that the number of solitons generated can be explain ed by a simple model. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.