Abstract

Spatial solitons in photorefractive materials have been a subject of recent interest.¹ When compared with Kerr spatial solitons, their most distinctive features is that they are observed at low light intensities and trapping occurs in both transverse dimensions. Photorefractive spatial solitons have been observed in the tungsten bronze ferroelectric oxides² and in the nonferroelectric sillenite oxides.³ In this paper we report self-induced trapping in one dimension in the semi-insulating compound semiconductor IrtP:Fe. In particular, we observe that for milliwatt laser beams diffraction is exactly balanced by the photorefractively induced index change. Our observation is made under steady-state conditions that were similar to that used for the observation of photorefractive solitons in strontium barium niobate (SBN).⁴

© 1996 Optical Society of America