Nonlinear tunneling of temporal and spatial optical solitons through organic thin films and polymeric waveguides

Nonlinear optical organic materials will be the key elements for future high-bit-rate telecommunications and ultrafast photonic technologies. We show that the process of nonlinear tunneling of optical solitons through a strong nonlinear thin film barrier, for example, a nonlinear organic thin film barrier, exhibits jump-like nonadiabatic evolution, which eventually leads to the soliton fission reactions. Nonlinear fission reaction is attended by generation of colored solitons with different frequencies and group velocities. It seems very attractive to use the nonlinear soliton tunneling effect through thin film of polydiacetylene para-toluene sulfonate in developing a whole class of basically novel all-optical soliton logic devices. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.