Dynamics of quadratic soliton excitation

We study the dynamics of the soliton-radiation interaction in the process of soliton excitation in quadratic nonlinear media The focus is on the dynamics of initial signals that are not weakly perturbed exact solitons. We use a combination of numerical experiments and analytical tools based on the integral conserved quantities of the wave evolution. We show the rate of convergence of representative, experimentally relevant inputs, to the asymptotic soliton states. A measure of soliton content of arbitrary input signals is introduced and evaluated in several representative examples. The dynamic evolution of oscillating solitons is studied using generalized Stokes parameters. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.