Spatial Kerr soliton collisions at arbitrary angles.

The theory of spatial Kerr solitons is extended to colliding beams that are neither almost-exactly copropagating nor almost-exactly counterpropagating. Our new Helmholtz formalism yields results that are consistent with the inherent symmetry of the collision process and that are not predicted by existing paraxial descriptions. Full numerical and approximate analytical results are presented. These show excellent agreement. In particular, Kerr solitons are found to be remarkably robust under nonparaxial collisions.