We show that pairwise soliton collisions in $N>2$ intensity-coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations can be reduced to pairwise soliton collisions in two coupled equations. The reduction applies to a wide class of systems, including the $N$-component Manakov system. This greatly simplifies the analysis of such systems and has important implications for the application of soliton collisions to all-optical computing.

• Received 29 November 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.254102