We discuss soliton control in reconfigurable optically-induced photonic lattices created by three interfering beams. We reveal novel dynamical regimes for strongly localized solitons, including binary switching and soliton revivals through resonant wave mixing.
We suggest a novel concept of diffraction management in waveguide arrays and predict the existence of discrete gap solitons that possess the properties of both conventional discrete and Bragg grating solitons. We demonstrate that both the soliton velocity and propagation direction can be controlled by varying the input light intensity.
As the formation of spatial optical solitons in photorefractive media is governed by modification of the refractive index every single solitons in complex configurations of solitons can act as a single waveguide for other light beams. In this article we demonstrate guiding of amplitude modulated beams in complex configurations of photorefractive solitons carrying information and we analyze the received signal in the kHz frequency range. The possibility of data transmission combined with waveguide couplers opens the route to all-optical networks.
We put forward new properties of lattice solitons in materials and geometries where both, the linear refractive index and the nonlinearity are spatially modulated. We show that the interplay between linear and out-of-phase nonlinear refractive index modulations results in new soliton properties, including modifications of the soliton stability and transverse mobility, as well as shape transformations that may be controlled, e.g., by varying the light intensity.
The existence and stability of stable bright solitons in one-dimensional (1D) media with a spatially periodical modulated Kerr nonlinearity are demonstrated by means of the linear-stability analysis and in direct numerical simulations. The nonlinear potential landscape can balance the fractional-order diffraction and thus stabilizes the solitons, making the model unique and governed by the recently introduced fractional Schrödinger equation with a self-focusing cubic nonlinear lattice. Both 1D fundamental and multihump solitons (in forms of dipole and tripole ones) are found, which occupy one …
We discover that a spatially localized gain supports stable vortex solitons in media with cubic nonlinearity and two-photon absorption. The interplay between nonlinear losses and gain in amplifying rings results in suppression of otherwise ubiquitous azimuthal modulation instabilities of radially symmetric vortex solitons. We uncover that the topology of the gain profile imposes restrictions on the maximal possible charge of vortex solitons. Symmetry breaking occurs at high gain levels resulting in the formation of necklace vortex solitons composed of asymmetric bright spots.
We address vortex solitons supported by optical lattices featuring modulation of both the linear and nonlinear refractive indices. We find that when the modulation is out-of-phase the competition between both effects results in remarkable shape transformations of the solitons which profoundly affect their properties and stability. Nonlinear refractive index modulation is found to impose restrictions on the maximal power of off-site solitons, which are shown to be stable only below a maximum nonlinearity modulation depth.
We address necklace solitons supported by circular waveguide arrays with out-of-phase modulation of nonlinearity and linear refractive index. Such two-dimensional necklace solitons appear as rings of multiple out-of-phase bright spots. We show that necklace solitons are stable if their peak intensity is low or moderate and that the domain of stability shrinks with increasing nonlinearity modulation depth. However, we find that the stability domains expand with increasing number of necklace spots.
We address the properties of two-dimensional surface solitons supported by the interface of a waveguide array whose nonlinearity is periodically modulated. When the nonlinearity strength reaches its minima at the points where the linear refractive index attains its maxima, we found that nonlinear surface waves exist and can be made stable only within a limited band of input energy flows, and for lattice depths exceeding a lower threshold.
We demonstrate numerically the possibility of generation of vector platicons having orthogonally polarized components by the modulated pump at normal GVD. Dynamics of this process can be controlled by pump polarization and depends on both the spectral interval between pumped modes and the difference of their FSRs. We also show the possibility of the excitation of the hybrid soliton-platicon complexes if pumped modes have alternating signs of the GVD coefficient.
We introduce novel optical solitons that consist of a periodic and a spatially localized components coupled nonlinearly via cross-phase modulation. The spatially localized optical field can be treated as a gap soliton supported by the optically-induced nonlinear grating. We find different types of these band-gap composite solitons and demonstrate their dynamical stability.
We study two-component solitons and their symmetry-breaking bifurcations (SBBs) in linearly coupled photonic systems with a spatially inhomogeneous strength of the coupling. One system models an inverted virtual photonic crystal, built by periodically doping the host medium with atoms implementing the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). In this system, two soliton-forming probe beams with different carrier frequencies are mutually coupled by the EIT-induced effective linear interconversion. The system is described by coupled nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equations for the probes, wit…
We report on the frst experimental observation of discrete vortex solitons in two-dimensional optically-induced photonic lattices. We demonstrate strong stabilization of an optical vortex by the lattice in a self-focusing nonlinear medium and study the generation of the discrete vortices from a broad class of singular beams.
We address azimuthally modulated Bessel optical lattices imprinted in focusing cubic Kerr-type nonlinear media, and reveal that such lattices support different types of stable solitons, whose complexity increases with growth of lattice order. We reveal that the azimuthally modulated lattices cause single solitons launched tangentially to the guiding rings to jump along consecutive sites of the optical lattice. The position of the output channel can be varied by small changes of the launching angle.
Solitons, nonlinear particle-like excitations with inalterable properties (amplitude, shape, and velocity) as they propagate, are omnipresent in many branches of science---and in physics in particular. Flat-top solitons are a novel type of bright solitons that have not been well explored in pure nonlinear media. Here, a model of nonlinear Kerr (cubic) media of ultracold atoms with spatially modulated repulsive interactions is proposed and shown to support a vast variety of stable flat-top matter-wave solitons, including one-dimensional (1D) flat-top fundamental and multipole solitons, two-dime…
We show dissipative spatial solitons in nonlinear optical micro-resonators in which the refractive index is laterally modulated. In addition to "normal" and "staggered" dissipative solitons, similar to those in spatially modulated conservative systems, a narrow "mid-band" soliton is shown, having no counterparts in conservative systems.
We analyze experimentally and theoretically the spatio-temporal dynamics of a highly multimode semiconductor laser with coherent optical injection. Due to the particular geometry of the device (a 1~m long ring cavity), the multimode dynamics can be resolved in real time and we observe stable chiral solitons and domain dynamics. The experiment is analyzed in the framework of a set of effective semiconductor Maxwell-Bloch equations. We analyze the stability of stationary solutions and simulate both the complete model and a reduced rate equation model. This allows us to predict domain shrinking a…
We report a detailed semi-analytical treatment to investigate the dynamics of a single cavity soliton (CS) and two co-propagating CSs separately in a Kerr mediated passive optical fiber resonator which is driven by a phase-modulated pump. The perturbation is dealt with by introducing a Rayleigh's dissipation function in the framework of variational principle that results in a set of coupled ordinary differential equations describing the evolution of individual soliton parameters. We further derive closed-form expressions for quick estimation of the temporal trajectory, drift velocity and the p…
We report on a systematic study of temporal Kerr cavity soliton dynamics in the presence of pulsed or amplitude modulated driving fields. In stark contrast to the more extensively studied case of phase modulations, we find that Kerr cavity solitons are not always attracted to maxima or minima of driving field amplitude inhomogeneities. Instead, we find that the solitons are attracted to temporal positions associated with specific driving field values that depend only on the cavity detuning. We describe our findings in light of a spontaneous symmetry breaking instability that physically ensues …
We address soliton spiraling in optical lattices induced by multiple coherent Bessel beams and show that the dynamical nature of such lattices make them able to drag different soliton structures, setting them into rotation. The rotation rate can be controlled by varying the topological charges of lattice-inducing Bessel beams.
We demonstrate that, in a two-dimensional dissipative medium described by the cubic-quintic (CQ) complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGL) equation with the viscous (spectral-filtering) term, necklace rings carrying a mixed radial-azimuthal phase modulation can evolve into polygonal or quasi-polygonal stable soliton clusters, and into stable fundamental solitons. The outcome of the evolution is controlled by the depth and azimuthal anharmonicity of the phase-modulation profile, or by the radius and number of "beads" in the initial necklace ring. Threshold characteristics of the evolution of the patterns a…
The real spectrum of bound states produced by PT-symmetric Hamiltonians usually suffers breakup at a critical value of the strength of gain-loss terms, i.e., imaginary part of the complex potential. On the other hand, it is known that the PT-symmetry can be made unbreakable in a one-dimensional (1D) model with self-defocusing nonlinearity whose strength grows fast enough from the center to periphery. The model is nonlinearizable, i.e., it does not have a linear spectrum, while the (unbreakable) PT symmetry in it is defined by spectra of continuous families of nonlinear self-trapped states (sol…
We employ polarization-shaped ultrafast optical pulses to generate photocurrents which only arise if the optically induced coherent polarization is frequency modulated. This frequency modulation is obtained via detuned excitation of light-hole excitons in (110)-oriented GaAs quantum wells. The observed photocurrents vanish for resonant excitation of excitons and reverse their direction with a change of the sign of detuning. Moreover, the currents do not exist for continuous-wave excitation. Our work reveals the existence of a new class of photocurrents and visualizes the complexity of current …
Lithium niobate on insulator (LNOI) waveguides, as an emerging technology, have proven to offer a promising platform for integrated optics, due to their strong optical confinement comparable to silicon on insulator (SOI) waveguides, while possessing the versatile properties of lithium niobate, such as high electro-optic coefficients. In this paper, we show that mode hybridization, a phenomenon widely found in vertically asymmetric waveguides, can be efficiently modulated in an LNOI ridge waveguide by electro-optic effect, leading to a polarization mode converter with 97% efficiency. Moreover, …
We demonstrate a simple and robust technique for removal of the carrier wave from a phase-modulated laser beam, using a non-interferometric method that is insensitive to the modulation frequency and instead exploits the polarization-dependence of electro-optic modulation. An actively stabilized system using feedback via a liquid crystal cell yields long-term carrier suppression in excess of 28 dB at the expense of a 6.5 dB reduction in sideband power.
We consider a two-dimensional (2D) generalization of a recently proposed model [Phys. Rev. E 88, 032905 (2013)], which gives rise to bright discrete solitons supported by the defocusing nonlinearity whose local strength grows from the center to the periphery. We explore the 2D model starting from the anti-continuum (AC) limit of vanishing coupling. In this limit, we can construct a wide variety of solutions including not only single-site excitations, but also dipole and quadrupole ones. Additionally, two separate families of solutions are explored: the usual "extended" unstaggered bright solit…
In uniaxial soft matter with a reorientational nonlinearity, such as nematic liquid crystals, a light beam in the extraordinary polarization walks off its wavevector due to birefringence, while it undergoes self-focusing via an increase in refractive index and eventually forms a spatial soliton. Hereby the trajectory evolution of solitons in nematic liquid crystals- nematicons- in the presence of a linearly varying transverse orientation of the optic axis is analysed. In this study we use and compare two approaches: i) a slowly varying (adiabatic) approximation based on momentum conservation o…
We study propagation of light in nonlinear diffraction-managed photonic lattices created with arrays of periodically-curved coupled optical waveguides which were fabricated using femtosecond laser writing in silica glass, and titanium indiffusion in LiNbO3 crystals. We identify different regimes of the nonlinear propagation of light beams depending on the input power, and present the first experimental observation of diffraction-managed solitons, which are formed as a result of the interplay between the engineered beam diffraction and nonlinear self-focusing or defocusing. We observe that in s…
We address dissipative soliton formation in modulated PT-symmetric continuous waveguide arrays composed from waveguides with amplifying and absorbing sections, whose density gradually increases (due to decreasing waveguide separation) either towards the center of the array or towards its edges. In such a structure the level of gain/loss at which PT-symmetry gets broken depends on the direction of increase of the waveguide density. Breakup of the PT-symmetry occurs when eigenvalues of modes localized in the region, where waveguide density is largest, collide and move into complex plane. In this…
Pulse propagation is studied in an EIT medium with the control field having a periodically varying phase (chirp). Based both on numerical calculations and on an approximate approach neglecting absorption and nonadiabatic effects, it is shown that transparency occurs for probe pulses having a sufficiently narrow envelope and an appropriately suited chirp. For other chirped pulses the evolution of their spectra along a sample is studied. Using a projection method one can divide a pulse into a part for which the medium is transparent and a rest for which it is opaque.
We develop stability analysis for matter-wave solitons in a two-dimensional (2D) Bose-Einstein condensate loaded in an optical lattice (OL), to which periodic time modulation is applied, in different forms. The stability is studied by dint of the variational approximation and systematic simulations. For solitons in the semi-infinite gap, well-defined stability patterns are produced under the action of the attractive nonlinearity, clearly exhibiting the presence of resonance frequencies. The analysis is reported for several time-modulation formats, including the case of in-phase modulations of …
We investigate solitons and nonlinear Bloch waves in Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in optical lattices. By introducing specially designed localized profiles of the spatial modulation of the attractive nonlinearity, we construct an infinite number of exact soliton solutions in terms of the Mathieu and elliptic functions, with the chemical potential belonging to the semi-infinite bandgap of the optical-lattice-induced spectrum. Starting from the exact solutions, we employ the relaxation method to construct generic families of soliton solutions in a numerical form. The stability of the solito…
Competing nonlinearities, such as the cubic (Kerr) and quintic nonlinear terms whose strengths are of opposite signs (the coefficients in front of the nonlinearities), exist in various physical media (in particular, in optical and matter-wave media). A benign competition between self-focusing cubic and self-defocusing quintic nonlinear nonlinearities (known as cubic-quintic model) plays an important role in creating and stabilizing the self-trapping of D-dimensional localized structures, in the contexts of standard nonlinear Schrödinger equation. We incorporate an external periodic potential (…
We consider parametric amplification of two-dimensional spatial soliton swinging in longitudinally modulated harmonic and Bessel lattices in Kerr-type saturable medium. We show that soliton center oscillations along different axes in two-dimensional lattices are coupled, which give rise to a number of interesting propagation scenarios including periodic damping and excitation of soliton oscillations along perpendicular axes, selective amplification of soliton swinging along one of transverse axes and enhancement of soliton spiraling.
In this article, we derive analytically the complex optical spectrum of a pulsed laser source obtained when a frequency comb generated by phase modulation is input into a synchronized intensity modulator. We then show how this knowledge of the spectrum may help to achieve unprecedented accuracy during the experimental spectrum correction step usually carried out with an optical spectrum processor. In numerical examples, for a given average power we present up to a 75 % increase in peak power and an enhancement of the extinction ratio by at least three orders of magnitude. This method also enab…
Frequency combs are light sources with coherent evenly-spaced lines. It has been observed that in certain laser systems, combs can form whose output is frequency-modulated (FM) in time. In this state, they produce an output whose frequency sweeps linearly and periodically. These results have been replicated numerically, but a thorough understanding of their core physics remains elusive. Surprisingly, we have found that these lasers are described by a nonlinear Schrodinger equation whose potential is proportional to the phase of the electric field. This equation can be solved exactly and produc…
Cavities with periodically oscillating mirrors have been predicted to excite photon pairs out of the quantum vacuum in a process known as the Dynamical Casimir effect. Here we propose and analyse an experimental layout that can provide an efficient modulation of the effective optical length of a cavity mode in the near-infrared spectral region. An analytical model of the dynamical Casimir emission is developed and compared to the predictions of a direct numerical solution of Maxwell's equations in real time. A sizeable intensity of dynamical Casimir emission is anticipated for realistic operat…
Single-pixel imaging, originally developed in light optics, facilitates fast three-dimensional sample reconstruction, as well as probing with light wavelengths undetectable by conventional multi-pixel detectors. However, the spatial resolution of optics-based single-pixel microscopy is limited by diffraction to hundreds of nanometers. Here, we propose an implementation of single-pixel imaging relying on attainable modifications of currently available ultrafast electron microscopes in which optically-modulated electrons are used instead of photons to achieve sub-nanometer spatially- and tempora…
Fundamental and vortex solitons in a two-dimensional optically induced waveguide array are reported. In the strong localization regime, the fundamental soliton is largely confined to one lattice site, while the vortex state comprises of four fundamental modes superimposed in a square configuration with a phase structure that is topologically equivalent to the conventional vortex. However, in the weak localization regime, both the fundamental and vortex solitons spread over many lattice sites. We further show that fundamental and vortex solitons are stable against small perturbations in the str…
Real-time polarization tuning in Mach-Zehnder interferometer using electro-optically modulated twist angles of nematic liquid crystal Note: This paper has been accepted for publication in "Journal of Theoretical and Applied Physics"
Photophoretic force due to the optically-induced thermal effect provides an effective way to manipulate the light-absorbing particles suspended in ambient gases. However, how this force temporally responds to the intensity modulation of the illumination light is unclear. Here, by vertically trapping a micron-sized absorbing particle with a negative photophoretic force generated by a focused Gaussian beam, we demonstrate that the temporal change in the photophoretic force in response to the intensity modulation is remarkably slow (with a time constant up to ~1 s) due to the slow change in the p…
We report on our initial attempt to characterize the intrinsic frequency response of metal-clad nanolasers. The probed nanolaser is optically biased and modulated, allowing the emitted signal to be detected using a high-speed photodiode at each modulation frequency. Based on this technique, the prospect of high-speed operation of nanolasers is evaluated by measuring the D-factor, which is the ratio of the resonance frequency to the square root of its output power (fR/P_out^2). Our measurements show that for nanolasers, this factor is an order of magnitude greater than that of other state-of-th…
Optical frequency combs based on mode-locked lasers have proven to be invaluable tools for a wide range of applications in precision spectroscopy and metrology. A novel principle of optical frequency comb generation in whispering-gallery mode microresonators ("microcombs") has been developed recently, which represents a promising route towards chip-level integration and out-of-the-lab use of these devices. Presently, two families of microcombs have been demonstrated: combs with electronically detectable mode spacing that can be directly stabilized, and broadband combs with up to octave-spannin…
We consider an array of straight nonlinear waveguides constituting a two-dimensional square lattice, with a few central layers tilted with respect to the rest of the structure. It is shown that such configuration represents a line defect, in the lattice plane, which is periodically modulated along the propagation direction. In the linear limit, such a system sustains line defect modes, whose number coincides with the number of tilted layers. In the presence of nonlinearity the branches of defect solitons propagating along the defect line bifurcate from each of the linear defect modes. Dependin…
Scanning Microwave Impedance Microscopy (MIM) measurement of photoconductivity with 50 nm resolution is demonstrated using a modulated optical source. The use of a modulated source allows for measurement of photoconductivity in a single scan without a reference region on the sample, as well as removing most topographical artifacts and enhancing signal to noise as compared with unmodulated measurement. A broadband light source with tunable monochrometer is then used to measure energy resolved photoconductivity with the same methodology. Finally, a pulsed optical source is used to measure local …
The effects of long-range intermolecular interactions on characteristic features of soliton bound states, consisting of localized excitons and polaritons in molecular crystals interacting with a high-intensity optical field, are investigated. Analytical solutions to the resulting modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation are obtained in terms of elliptic-type bright- and dark-soliton structures, which are assumed to correspond to periodic trains of pulse solitons and kink solitons respectively. Long-range intermolecular interactions are shown to renormalize the exciton-polariton interaction stre…
Conversion of linearly polarized high-harmonic radiation into the circularly polarized in an optically modulated plasma-based X-ray laser: taking into account the nonlinearity and finite width of the harmonic spectral lines
We construct families of fundamental, dipole, and tripole solitons in the fractional Schrödinger equation (FSE)\ incorporating self-focusing cubic and defocusing quintic terms modulated by factors $\cos ^{2}x$ and $\sin^{2}x$, respectively. While the fundamental solitons are similar to those in the model with the uniform nonlinearity, the multipole complexes exist only in the presence of the nonlinear lattice. The shapes and stability of all the solitons strongly depend on the Lévy index (LI)\ that determines the FSE fractionality. Stability areas are identified in the plane of LI and propagat…
We demonstrate experimentally all-optical beam steering in modulated photonic lattices induced optically by three beam interference in a biased photorefractive crystal. We identify and characterize the key physical parameters governing the beam steering, and show that the spatial resolution can be enhanced by the additional effect of nonlinear beam self-localization.
The light ray of a spatial soliton in an optical film whose refractive index is smoothly modulated (wavelength much larger than the typical soliton width) in both spatial directions is shown to possess chaotic regimes for which the propagation is erratic. This is interpreted as a parametric driven pendulum, obtained by a new perturbative approach of the Maxwell equation. These findings are then demonstrated to compare well to the eikonal law of light ray propagation (nonlinearity compensates diffraction).