Method for generating solitons sustained by competing nonlinearities by use of optical rectification.

We put forward a method for generating engineerable competing quadratic and cubic nonlinearities in suitable settings in which frequency generation is accompanied by optical rectification. The novel scheme is based on the full exploitation of the geometrical conditions that determine the magnitude of the rectified fields and translates the different orientations of an elliptical pump beam into tunable nonlinearities, which can be used to act on the spectral composition and overall features of optical solitons.