Waveguides Written and Stored by Photovoltaic Dark Spatial Solitons in LiNbO₃:Fe Crystals

To our knowledge, we have demonstrated for the first time that (2+1)-dimension photorefractive waveguides can be written and stored by light using the (2+1)-dimension photovoltaic dark spatial solitons in LiNbO₃:Fe crystals. It can guide a probe beam of the same wavelength as that of the writing beam.