Soliton fusion and steering by the simultaneous launch of two different-color solitons

Two optical solitons with different center frequencies simultaneously launched into an optical fiber are considered. By numerical simulation and by experiment, it is shown that if their frequency separation is small, they will either merge into a single pulse (fusion) or form two pulses with different velocities (steering), depending on their phase difference. With a 400-m fiber and ~2.5-ps solitons at 1457.7 and 1460.7 nm, fusion and steering of as much as 7 ps are demonstrated.