Observation of bright spatial photorefractive solitons in a planar strontium barium niobate waveguide

We have obtained stationary bright spatial solitons in a planar photorefractive strontium barium niobate waveguide for visible light ranging from 514.5 to 780 nm. Even for larger wavelengths (lambda = 1047 nm) strong self-focusing of the beam was observed; however, input power had to be some orders of magnitude higher than for visible light for self-focusing to occur. Furthermore, we found transient self-trapping of red light (lambda = 632.8 nm) that corresponds to the formation of bright quasi-steady-state solitons. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.