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We present recent experimental and numerical results for dissipative propagating spatial solitons in periodically-patterned semiconductor optical ampli- fiers (SOAs). These devices are designed to suppress the destabilization of solitons due to the amplification of noise in the soliton tails in uniformly-pumped SOAs. We briefly describe the fabrication of these devices. The zero-parameter and non-local characteristics of the solitons are studied experimentally and compared with simu- lations. We have also investigated soliton interactions, accounting for the effects of non-locality and zero-parameter properties.

We have investigated the interaction between two dissipative spatial solitons of different frequencies in periodically patterned semiconductor optical amplifiers. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theory. Simulations suggest that multiwavelength interactions do not produce stable bound solitons unless the system's modeling equations are completely symmetric.

We review our observations of multiple solitonic phenomena in electrically pumped semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) including the generation of scalar solitons, their interactions, the possibility of incoherent vector solitons and modulational instability.

We have investigated the dissipative spatial solitons in optical amplifiers. These solitons have unique properties (such as autosignal recovery) throughout their formation and interactions. They require 10 s of mWs and

Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) have proved to be very useful elements for networks and communications systems. As well as amplifying signals, SOAs have been also used for a number of network optical processing functions, such as switching, demultiplexing, frequency shifting etc. Usually the light is guided in SOAs by fixed channel waveguides fabricated by some form of microlithography. As a result, controllable routing functions etc. need to be implemented by electro-optic devices such as Mach-Zehnder interferometers. There is another option for guiding in SOA chips which is more flexible. Spatial solitons, i.e. self-trapped beams which propagate without spreading, have now been observed with many different nonlinearities. These are all essentially lossless systems in which spatial diffraction is compensated by some self-focusing mechanism. However, in an amplifying medium like an SOA, loss must also be balanced by gain, which leads to an inherently different soliton than the lossless ones. In this case, the small signal gain determines completely the soliton properties, i.e., there is no trade-off between the peak intensity and the soliton width as is well-known for solitons in lossless media. We discuss the first observation of these "dissipative" solitons.

We report the observation of interactions between two coherent dissipative spatial solitons in a periodically patterned semiconductor optical amplifier (PPSOA). The interactions are non-local and phase dependent and exhibit surprising features such as soliton birth.

We have observed for the first time stable spatial solitons in semiconductor optical amplifiers. Soliton destabilization due to the growth of background noise was suppressed by using patterned electrodes on the device. Numerical simulations fit very well with the experiment results. We show that it is possible to excite these solitons with about 60 mW input power.

We report the first experimental observation of spatial dissipative solitons (autosoliton) in a patterned electrode semiconductor amplifier (SOA). Our results fit with the numerical simulations which support the bifurcating behavior of solitons with current pumping.

Summary form only given. It has been experimentally and theoretically, proved in the temporal case (recirculating fiber loop with SOA) that saturable absorbers (SA) can stabilize the propagation and lead to the formation of stable dissipative temporal solitons. We take advantage of these findings and propose here to mimic saturable absorbers by unpumped regions (periodically patterned electrodes). We model the field (/spl psi/) and carrier density (N) evolution by using a paraxial wave equation with resonant semiconductor nonlinearities coupled to a carrier diffusion equation that includes spontaneous and Auger recombination.

We theoretically investigate the spatial modulation instability (MI) properties of an electrically pumped, periodically patterned semiconductor optical amplifier. The MI spatial period is found to be related to the widths of the stable solitons supported by this device. Specific conditions for the observation of MI in such dissipative structures are given in terms of relevant examples.

We show that discrete dissipative optical lattice solitons are possible in waveguide array configurations that involve periodically patterned semiconductor optical amplifiers and saturable absorbers. The characteristics of these low-power soliton states are investigated, and their propagation constant eigenvalues are mapped on Floquet-Bloch band diagrams. The prospect of observing such low-power dissipative lattice solitons is discussed in detail.

We report observation of the interaction between two coherent dissipative spatial solitons in a periodically patterned semiconductor optical amplifier with power levels of tens of milliwatts. The interactions are nonlocal and phase dependent and exhibit surprising features, such as soliton birth. The experimental results are in good agreement with the numerical simulations.