title: All-optical switching of a signal by a pair of interacting nematicons.
abstract: We investigate a power tunable junction formed by two interacting spatial solitons self-trapped in nematic liquid crystals. By launching a counter-propagating copolarized probe we assess the guided-wave behavior induced by the solitons and demonstrate a novel all-optical switch. Varying soliton power the probe gets trapped into one or two or three guided-waves by the soliton-induced index perturbation, an effect supported by the nonlocal nonlinearity.
authors.affiliation: Nonlinear Physics Center, Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. yvi124@physics.anu.edu.au
authors.forename: Ya V
authors.initials: YV
authors.lastname: Izdebskaya
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rebling
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Desyatnikov
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Assanto
authors.forename: Yu S
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Kivshar