We study the optical oscillations of supermodes in planar optical waveguide arrays with parabolically graded propagation constant in individual waveguide interacting through nearest neighbor couplings. In these arrays, we have identified a transition between a symmetric dipole oscillation (DO) and a symmetry-breaking Bloch oscillation (BO) under appropriate conditions. There exist obvious correspondences between gradon localization and various optical oscillations. By virtue of an analogue between the oscillation of optical system and that of a plane pendulum, we propose a shift of the graded profile to cause a transition from BO to DO. We confirm the optical transition by means of Hamiltonian optics, as well as by the field evolution of the supermodes. The results offer great potential applications in optical switching, which can be applied to design suitable optical devices.

We have studied the propagation and Zener tunneling of light in the binary parabolic optical waveguide array (BPOWA), which consists of two evanescently coupled dissimilar optical waveguides. Due to Bragg reflections, BPOWA attains two minibands separated by a minigap at the zone boundary.Various coherent superpositions of optical oscillations and Zener tunneling occur for different parameters on the phase diagram. In particular, Bloch-Zener oscillation and a different type of Bloch-dipole-Zener oscillation are obtained by the field-evolution analysis. The results may have potential applications in optical splitting and waveguiding devices and shed light on the coherent phenomena in optical lattices.

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We have studied harmonic oscillations in an elliptical optical waveguide array in which the coupling between neighboring waveguides is varied in accord with a Kac matrix so that the propagation constant eigenvalues can take equally spaced values. As a result, long-living Bloch oscillation (BO) and dipole oscillation (DO) are obtained when a linear gradient in the propagation constant is applied. Moreover, we achieve a switching from DO to BO or vice versa by ramping up the gradient profile. The various optical oscillations as well as their switching are investigated by field evolution analysis and confirmed by Hamiltonian optics. The equally spaced eigenvalues in the propagation constant allow viable applications in transmitting images, switching and routing of optical signals.