We analyze nonlinear properties of microstructured materials with negative refraction, the socalled left-handed metamaterials. We consider a two-dimensional periodic structure created by arrays of wires and split-ring resonators embedded into a nonlinear dielectric, and calculate the effective nonlinear electric permittivity and magnetic permeability. We demonstrate that the hysteresis-type dependence of the magnetic permeability on the field intensity allows changing the material from left-to right-handed and back. These effects can be treated as the second-order phase transitions in the transmission properties induced by the variation of an external field.

We study both linear and nonlinear surface waves localized at the interface separating a left-handed (LH) medium (i.e., a medium with both negative dielectric permittivity and negative magnetic permeability) and a conventional [or right-handed (RH)] dielectric medium. We demonstrate that the interface can support both TE- and TM-polarized surface waves-surface polaritons, and we study their properties. We describe the intensity-dependent properties of nonlinear surface waves in three different cases, i.e., when both the LH and RH media are nonlinear and when either of the media is nonlinear. In the case when both media are nonlinear, we find two types of nonlinear surface waves, one with the maximum amplitude at the interface, and the other one with two humps. In the case when one medium is nonlinear, only one type of surface wave exists, which has the maximum electric field at the interface, unlike waves in right-handed materials where the surface-wave maximum is usually shifted into a self-focusing nonlinear medium. We discuss the possibility of tuning the wave group velocity in both the linear and nonlinear cases, and show that group-velocity dispersion, which leads to pulse broadening, can be balanced by the nonlinearity of the media, so resulting in soliton propagation.

We study experimentally nonlinear tunable magnetic metamaterials operating at microwave frequencies. We fabricate the nonlinear metamaterial composed of double split-ring resonators where a varactor diode is introduced into each resonator so that the magnetic resonance can be tuned dynamically by varying the input power. We demonstrate that at higher powers the transmission of the metamaterial becomes power-dependent and, as a result, such metamaterial can demonstrate various nonlinear properties. In particular, we study experimentally the power-dependent shift of the transmission band and demonstrate nonlinearity-induced enhancement (or suppression) of wave transmission.

We analyze the existence, stability, and propagation of dissipative discrete localized modes in one- and two-dimensional nonlinear lattices composed of weakly coupled split-ring resonators (SRRs) excited by an external electromagnetic field. We employ the near-field interaction approach for describing quasi-static electric and magnetic interaction between the resonators, and demonstrate the crucial importance of the electric coupling, which can completely reverse the sign of the overall interaction between the resonators. We derive the effective nonlinear model and analyze the properties of nonlinear localized modes excited in one-and two-dimensional lattices. In particular, we study nonlinear magnetic domain walls (the so-called switching waves) separating two different states of nonlinear magnetization, and reveal the bistable dependence of the domain wall velocity on the external field. Then, we study two-dimensional localized modes in nonlinear lattices of SRRs and demonstrate that larger domains may experience modulational instability and splitting.

Using the quasi-particle approach, we studied the problem of the reflection of quadratic spatial solitons from an interface between two (2) media with slightly different linear and nonlinear properties. The possibility of soliton capture by an interface associated with nonlinear surface wave excitation is shown. The calculations are carried out for the well-known single as well as a novel type of multihump soliton, for which we obtain a new analytical expression in the nonlocal limit for the first time to our knowledge.