Transverse distribution of quantum fluctuations and correlations in a spatial soliton

Summary form only given. The quantum properties of the interaction between an electromagnetic field and a nonlinear media have been widely studied, theoretically and experimentally, but so far these studies concerned mainly measurements performed on the total intensity of light beams, integrated over all the transverse plane. However, the details of the noise distribution inside the transverse plane, as well as the spatial quantum correlation between two different points, can be also very instructive, on a fundamental side in order to understand the propagation of the quantum noise, but also on a practical side to generate special configurations of the field which allow us to increase the spatial resolution of measurements in the transverse plane. We study here the spatial properties of the quantum fluctuations for a field freely propagating in a thick nonlinear medium, and in a case where the interaction distance is not limited by the diffraction : the spatial soliton regime, where diffraction effects are counterbalanced by nonlinearity and which exists in /spl chi//sup (2)/ and /spl chi//sup (3)/ media.