We present a brief overview of the physics of vector optical spatial solitons formed by an incoherent interaction of two optical beams in a medium with saturable nonlinearity and describe the families of two-mode vector spatial solitons, which appears via bifurcations of one-component solitons, and their bound states. We report the results of the experimental observations of bound states formed by two vector spatial solitons due to a force balance between the soliton components, and also demonstrate a link between such bound states and earlier reported multihump multi-mode optical solitons.

Date Published: 23 March 2000
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 3928, Nonlinear Materials, Devices, and Applications, (23 March 2000);

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3928:
Nonlinear Materials, Devices, and Applications
Jeffrey W. Pierce, Editor(s)