Switching between the bistable soliton states in a doubly and inhomogeneously doped fiber system is studied numerically. Both the cases of lossless as well as lossy couplers are considered. It is shown that both up-switching (from the low state to the high state) and down-switching (from the high state to the low state) of solitons between bistable states are realizable, if the amplification of the input soliton for up-switching and the extraction of energy from it for down-switching are suitably adjusted.

A numerical study of ultra-short self-soliton switching along with the corresponding analysis of coupler parameters is carried out for a Kerr coupler with intermodal dispersion. The influence of perturbations like third-order dispersion, self-steepening and intrapulse Raman scattering, on switching characteristics is also studied.

The propagation equation for a single- and a few-cycle pulses was derived in a cubic nonlinear medium including the Raman response. Using this equation, the propagation characteristics of a single- and a 4-cycle pulse, at 0.8 $\mu$m wavelength, were studied numerically in one spatial dimension. It was shown that Raman term does influence the propagation characteristics of a single- as well as a few-cycle pulses by counteracting the self-steepening effect.