Optical switch phenomenon in a self-defocusing medium

A spatial optical switch phenomenon caused by the induced focusing of a weak probe beam occurring in self-defocusing nonlinear media is discussed theoretically. A weak beam is induced to focus when it copropagates with an intense pump beam under the conditions that the probe and pump beams peak at different positions and propagate in different directions. Due to the effect of cross-phase modulation, the weak beam can not only be focused but also be deflected. The phenomenon is discussed by numerically solving the coupled amplitude equations.