Elastic and inelastic interactions between optical spatial solitons in nonlinear optics

Elastic and inelastic interactions between optical spatial solitons in nonlinear optics, which to our knowledge have not been reported before, are investigated in this paper. Analytic soliton solutions for the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equation are obtained using the Hirota method. The coefficient constraints, which can be used to determine whether the soliton interactions are elastic or inelastic, are presented. With different coefficient constraints, the characteristics of soliton interactions are exhibited. The results of this paper may have applications in the design of directional couplers and all-optical logical gates.