Slow-light soliton beam splitters

We propose a scheme to realize slow-light soliton beam splitters by using a tripod-type four-level atomic system. We show that optical solitons, which have ultraslow propagation velocity and ultralow generation power, can be generated in the system via electromagnetically induced transparency and can be stored and retrieved with high efficiency and fidelity. In particular, a nonlinear beam splitter that splits one optical soliton into two or more ones can be obtained by switching on and off of two or more control laser fields subsequently. The results reported here open a route not only for active manipulation of nonlinear optical pulses in multistate quantum systems but also for promising applications in optical information processing and transmission.