Proposal Number: ECS-9632964 Principal Investigator: Mordechai Segev Title: Photorefractiove Solitons Abstract This research will investigate fundamental aspects of photorefractive solitons and will also demonstrate their practical potential in a series of important applications including high efficiency frequency difference generation in a soliton induced waveguide, ultra-narrow beam steering, optical wring and near-field reconfigurable interconnects. Research on photorefractive solitons in the semiconductors GaAs and InP will also be conducted in order to investigate theoretically predicted intensity dependent resonant behavior. Photorefractive solitons (an area pioneered by the PI) use the photorefractive nonlinearity: photorefractive solitons form when a photorefractive medium interacts with a beam of light such than the nonlinear index-change exactly compensates for diffractive spreading and traps the beam. Once generated, photorefractive solitons can act was graded-index waveguides in the volume of the bulk crystal and very weak soliton beam can guide a very intense beam of a longer (non-photorefractive)wavelength with no degradation. Photorefractive solitons are also robust and stable against material inhomogeneities. Forming a practical soliton trapped in both transverse dimensions in a bulk medium has been a long-standing open problem which has limited their practical use.
