ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces optical spatial solitons as the central concept of optically induced nonlinear waveguides. The generation of self-induced adaptive waveguides, commonly called spatial optical soliton, is distinguished by variety of special properties stemming from the particle-like behavior of these entities and their ability for controlled interaction. The chapter presents the generation of self-trapped optical beams in photorefractive media along with their interaction properties. In photorefractive media, the index of refraction is slowly changed by an interplay of charge carrier transport and linear electrooptic effect. A photonic lattice is an optical material with a periodic modulation of the refractive index, also called photonic crystal. Photonic lattices can be induced optically by linear diffraction-free light patterns created by interfering several plane waves. Finally, the chapter considers the generation of periodic materials consisting of many parallel waveguides by solitons in order to take advantage of the parallel information processing capabilities of optical systems.
