Spatial solitons in a semiconductor microresonator

Summary form only given. In view of potential usefulness of spatial resonator solitons for optical information processing we show experimentally the existence of spatial solitons in a quantum-well-GaAsiGaAlAsm icroresonator. For excitation far below the exciton energy, where the nonlinearity is predominantly dispersive, hexagon structures form in the unswitched state [I]. As opposed, for wavelengths close to the band gap and exciton line, absorptive nonlinearity is pronounced and formation of extended structures is prohibited. This allows to search for spatial cavity solitons which are predicted for absorptive semiconductor nonlinearity 121.