Interaction phenomena in second-order nonlinear materials

Summary form only given. During the past three years, interest has grown rapidly in the theoretical and experimental study of solitary waves in materials with second-order nonlinearities, especially after they were experimentally observed in geometries with one of two transverse dimensions. In a real application/experiment, only fundamental waves will be launched and the interaction of interest will occur during or subsequent to the evolution into spatial solitary waves. In this case, the solitary wave is excited in two steps: generation of the second harmonic followed by a series of slow oscillations as the two pulses reshape into a solitary wave. Here we will focus on the dependence of the interaction of the two pulses on the reshaping oscillations.