Kerr spatial solitons at telecommunication wavelengths in AlGaAs

In our work, we report an experimental study on the generation and propagation of steerable bright spatial solitons in AlGaAs. The AlGaAs semiconductor exhibits a strong Kerr nonlinearity from bound electrons for photon energy just below half the band gap. Furthermore, we demonstrate that solitons can be obtained over a wide spectral range around 1.5 /spl mu/m. Finally, we show that the solitons' propagation direction can be controlled.