Large self-deflection of soliton beams in LiNbO3

We report the observation of large self-deflection of 2-D bright photorefractive solitons in LiNbO3 crystal under a dc applied field. Beam deflection as large as 300 mu m after a 7 mm. propagation distance is reported, leading to formation of curved 2-D waveguides. We attribute this large deflection to the low level of impurity acceptors present in the samples, as confirmed by numerical results from a time-dependent photorefractive model. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.