Modulational instability of continuous waves and one-dimensional temporal solitons in fiber arrays

We present a linear stability analysis of two-dimensional continuous waves and one-dimensional temporal solitons in nonlinear-optical fiber arrays. Guided by this analysis, we use numerical integrations of the governing equations to show that these arrays are all-optical switching devices. Light injected into the N-fiber array is temporally compressed and spatially localized into a few fibers on output.