An electrically steered reconfigurable channel waveguide in an active semiconductor slab

We report the realization of a self-focused (soliton-like) waveguide that utilizes the carrier-induced nonlinearities of an active GaAs slab structure. A quasi cw 900nm laser beam was used to write the soliton-like waveguide that was effective at guiding another unrelated laser beam at 960nm. Steering of the laser beam over a distance of 20 /spl mu/m at the output face of a 1.7mm long device was achieved by injecting an electrical current through a triangular metal electrode lying above the path of the optical beam.