BEAM SWITCHING BY NONLINEAR CONTROL OF TOTAL INTERNAL-REFLECTION

In the strongly nonlinear regime, a spatial soliton in Kerr-law media will either wholly refract through or wholly reflect from an interface between nonlinear media with differing linear refractive indices and differing nonlinear index coefficients. If this soliton is launched so that a small change in its power will cause it to reflect rather than to refract or vice versa, then this opens the possibility of all-opti cally switching its output direction through the addition of a small p robe beam at a different wavelength. The physics of this problem is de scribed and various switching scenarios are investigated.