Bloch Oscillations and Zener Tunneling in Two-Dimensional Photonic Lattices

Abstract

We report on the first experimental observation of photonic Bloch oscillations and Zener tunneling in two-dimensional periodic systems. We study the propagation of an optical beam in a square photonic lattice superimposed on a refractive index ramp, and demonstrate the tunneling of light from the first to the higher-order transmission bands of the lattice bandgap spectrum, associated with the spectral dynamics inside the first Brillouin zone and corresponding oscillations of the primary beam.

Fractional Bloch oscillations in photonic lattices

“…In their essence, BO are a wave phenomenon. As such, they are found for optical [7][8][9][10][11] and acoustic 12 waves as well. When interactions between particles compete with their mobility, novel dynamical behaviour can arise where particles form bound states 13 and co-tunnel through the lattice 14 .…”

Optical mesh lattices withPTsymmetry

“…Optical waveguide arrays represent yet another class of periodic structures and have been the focus of intense research in the last decade [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. As indicated in several studies, optical arrays can be used as versatile platforms to observe a number of processes ranging from Bloch oscillations [9,10] to Landau-Zener tunneling [11], and from Anderson localization [12] to discrete solitons [6,7] and Rabi oscillations [13] and dynamic localization [14], just to mention a few. Along similar lines, longitudinally periodically modulated optical waveguide arrays have also been studied in several works [15,16].…”

Geometric stabilization of extendedS=2vortices in two-dimensional photonic lattices: Theoretical analysis, numerical computation, and experimental results

“…Indeed, the theoretical proposal [5] of such lattice solitons was followed quickly by their experimental realization in 2D induced lattices [9,10], subsequently leading to the observation of a host of novel solitons in this setting, including dipole [11], multipole [12], necklace [13], and rotary [14] solitons as well as discrete [15,16] and gap [17] vortices. In addition to lattice solitons, photonic lattices have enabled observations of other intriguing phenomena such as higher order Bloch modes [18], Zener tunneling [19], and localized modes in honeycomb [20], hexagonal [21] and quasi-crystalline [22] lattices, and Anderson localization [23] (see, e.g., the recent review [24] for additional examples). In parallel, experimental development in the area of BECs closely follows, with prominent recent results including the observation of bright, dark and gap solitons in quasi-onedimensional settings [25], with the generation of similar structures in higher dimensions being experimentally feasible for BECs trapped in optical lattices [26,27].…”