Incoherently coupled soliton pairs in biased photorefractive crystals

Abstract

Summary form only given. Recently it was demonstrated that spatial optical solitons at /spl mu/W power levels can be supported in photorefractive (PR) media. We show that a new type of incoherently coupled soliton pairs is possible under steady-state conditions provided that their carrier beams share the same polarization and wavelength and are mutually incoherent. They can be readily realized in a simple experimental setup where the optical beams co-propagate collinearly in a biased PR crystal in which case they experience equal electrooptic coefficients.