Observation of Nonlinear Self-Trapping of Broad Beams in Defocusing Waveguide Arrays

Journal Article · Fri Mar 04 04:00:00 EST 2011 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.106.093901· OSTI ID:21562071

Bennet, Francis H; Haslinger, Franz; Neshev, Dragomir N; Kivshar, Yuri S ^[1]; Alexander, Tristram J ^[2]; Mitchell, Arnan ^[3]

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1. Nonlinear Physics Centre, Centre for Ultrahigh-Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200 (Australia)
2. Nonlinear Physics Centre, Centre for Ultrahigh-Bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200 (Australia); School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, UNSW-ADFA, Canberra ACT 2600 (Australia)
3. CUDOS, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne Vic 3001 (Australia)

We demonstrate experimentally the localization of broad optical beams in periodic arrays of optical waveguides with defocusing nonlinearity. This observation in optics is linked to nonlinear self-trapping of Bose-Einstein-condensed atoms in stationary periodic potentials being associated with the generation of truncated nonlinear Bloch states, existing in the gaps of the linear transmission spectrum. We reveal that unlike gap solitons, these novel localized states can have an arbitrary width defined solely by the size of the input beam while independent of nonlinearity.

• OSTI ID: 21562071
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 106; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BEAMS
DIMENSIONS
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PERIODICITY
POTENTIALS
QUASI PARTICLES
SOLITONS
SPECTRA
TRANSMISSION
TRAPPING
VARIATIONS
WAVEGUIDES
WIDTH