Collisions, steering, and guidance with spatial solitons.

By colliding two self-guided beams (solitons), we generate one, two, three, four, or possibly more stable solitons for a broad class of nonlinear material that spans threshold to power-law nonlinearities. This reproduction is shown to depend critically on beam stability, on the standard waveguide parameter V, and on a scaled angular beam separation theta/theta(c). The beams can also annihilate one another or create a stable beam from two unstable beams. Beam steering is possible by differentially changing soliton power or phase. Also, the colliding solitons induce versatile optical devices for the switching and steering of small-signal beams.