Coherently coupled bright optical solitons and their collisions

We obtain explicit bright one- and two-soliton solutions of the integrable case of the coherently coupled nonlinear Schr{\"o}dinger equations by applying a non-standard form of the Hirota's direct method. We find that the system admits both degenerate and non-degenerate solitons in which the latter can take single hump, double hump, and flat-top profiles. Our study on the collision dynamics of solitons in the integrable case shows that the collision among degenerate solitons and also the collision of non-degenerate solitons are always standard elastic collisions. But the collision of a degenerate soliton with a non-degenerate soliton induces switching in the latter leaving the former unaffected after collision, thereby showing a different mechanism from that of the Manakov system.