OBSERVATION OF INTERACTION FORCES BETWEEN ONE-DIMENSIONAL SPATIAL SOLITONS IN PHOTOREFRACTIVE CRYSTALS

We propagate two coherent and parallel beams of a Re-Ne laser through a Bi12TiO20 photorefractive crystal in the presence of drift nonlinear ity. Our experimental results demonstrate that. the beams attract or r epel each other according to their initial phase difference. They attr act each other when they are initially in phase and they repel each ot her when they are initially out of phase. These experimental results a gree with numerical predictions recently published. (C) 1997 Optical S ociety of America