OPTICAL JUNCTIONS BASED ON A 3 SPATIAL SO LITONS COLLISION

We study the weak-beam switching properties of a symmetric collision o f three spatial solitons in a positive Kerr-type nonlinear medium. We first show that such a geometry has more application perspectives that the geometry based on the collision of two solitons, mainly because i t possesses a fixed detection channel. Then we show that controllable optical junctions or beam splitters can be obtained by changing the an gle of collision of the solitons. We also demonstrate the switch opera tion of such an optical junction when the relative phases between the solitons are varied, even for large collision angles.