SPLITTING OF HIGH-ORDER SPATIAL SOLITONS UNDER THE ACTION OF 2-PHOTONABSORPTION

We analyze the effect of two-photon absorption on the propagation of h igh-order spatial optical solitons. The main focus of the paper is the splitting of the soliton bound state which has been recently observed experimentally. Using the results of the adiabatic perturbation theor y and the information extracted from the Zakharov-Shabat eigenvalue pr oblem we investigate the evolution of the soliton amplitudes and demon strate that such a splitting can be understood as resulting from a seq uence of the amplitude jumps which finally lead to a structural bifurc ation. Different regimes of soliton splitting and decay are analyzed i n detail.