SPATIAL SOLITON DEFLECTION MECHANISM INDICATED BY FD-TD MAXWELLS EQUATIONS MODELING

We present first-time calculations from the time-domain vector Maxwell 's equations of spatial optical soliton propagation and mutual deflect ion, including carrier waves, in a 2-D homogeneous Kerr-type nonlinear dielectric. The nonlinear Schrodinger equation predicts that two co-p ropagating, in-phase spatial solitons remain bound to each other, exec uting a periodic separation. This disagrees with our new extensively t ested finite-difference time-domain (FD-TD) solution of Maxwell's equa tions. FD-TD shows that co-propagating in-phase spatial solitons becom e unbound, i.e. diverge to arbitrarily large separations, if the ratio of soliton beamwidth to wavelength is order 1 or less. Not relying up on paraxial approximations or analogies to temporal soliton interactio ns, FD-TD appears to be a robust means of obtaining detailed models of the interaction of sub-picosecond pulsed light beams in nonlinear med ia directly in the space-time domain.