2-DIMENSIONAL SPATIAL OPTICAL SOLITONS IN BULK KERR MEDIA STABILIZED BY SELF-INDUCED MULTIPHOTON IONIZATION - VARIATIONAL APPROACH

The beam parameters of spatial two-dimensional solitons in a bulk medi um under the influence of the combined effects of diffraction, Kerr no nlinearity, and nonlinear index change by plasma creation will be stud ied with the help of a variational approach. A simple analytical relat ion for the power of a spatial two-dimensional soliton is derived whic h shows a two-valued behavior in dependence on the beam diameter. The variational approximation is compared with numerical and experimental results. The solution is proven to be stable against small perturbatio ns in the whole parameter region.