Experimental evidence of dissipative spatial solitons in an optical passive Kerr cavity

Odent, Vincent; Taki, Majid; Louvergneaux, E.

doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/11/113026

Cited by 28 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Currently they attract growing interest in optics due to potential applications for all-optical control of light, optical storage, and information processing. They appear in an optical resonator containing a third order nonlinear media such as liquid crystals, and driven coherently by an injected beam in a positive diffraction regime and close to modulational instability [4,5]. The existence of localized structures and localized patterns, due to the occurrence of a modulational instability, has been abundantly discussed and is by now fairly well understood [6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental observation of front propagation in a negatively diffractive inhomogeneous Kerr cavity

et al. 2014

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Artículo de publicación ISIA focusing Kerr Fabry-P´erot cavity operating in a negative diffraction regime exhibits transverse propagating fronts connecting two different nematic liquid crystal molecule average orientations. Under an inhomogeneous spatial pumping beam, these fronts stop to propagate and lead to the formation of a stable localized structure. The trajectory of the front position is derived from the mean-field model. Its hyperbolic tangent analytical expression perfectly fits the experimental data.ANR International program, Project No. ANR- 2010-INTB-402-02 (ANRCONICYT39), COLORS. M.G.C. thanks FONDECYT for financial support through Project No. 1120320. This researchwas also supported in part by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the Fonds Europ´een de D´eveloppement Economique de R´egions, and the Interuniversity Attraction 463 Poles program of the Belgian Science PolicyOffice, under 464 Grant No. IAP P7-35 Photonics@be

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental observation of front propagation in a negatively diffractive inhomogeneous Kerr cavity

et al. 2014

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“…In optical cavities, DS (also known as cavity solitons) have been proposed as bits for all-optical memories [9][10][11][12][13], due to their spatial localization and bistable coexistence with the fundamental solution. In Ref.…”

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confidence: 99%

Dissipative Soliton Excitability Induced by Spatial Inhomogeneities and Drift

et al. 2013

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We show that excitability is generic in systems displaying dissipative solitons when spatial inhomogeneities and drift are present. Thus, dissipative solitons in systems which do not have oscillatory states, such as the prototypical Swift-Hohenberg equation, display oscillations and Type I and II excitability when adding inhomogeneities and drift to the system. This rich dynamical behavior arises from the interplay between the pinning to the inhomogeneity and the pulling of the drift. The scenario presented here provides a general theoretical understanding of oscillatory regimes of dissipative solitons reported in semiconductor microresonators. Our results open also the possibility to observe this phenomenon in a wide variety of physical systems. [6,7], or excitability [8]. DS emerge from a balance between nonlinearity and spatial coupling, and driving and dissipation. They are unique once the system parameters are fixed, and they are different from the well known conservative solitons that appear as oneparameter families.In optical cavities, DS (also known as cavity solitons) have been proposed as bits for all-optical memories [9-13], due to their spatial localization and bistable coexistence with the fundamental solution. In Ref. [8] it was reported that DS may exhibit excitable behavior. A system is said to be excitable if perturbations below a certain threshold decay exponentially, while perturbations above this threshold induce a large response before going back to the resting state. Excitability is found for parameters close to those where a limit cycle disappears [14]. Excitability mediated by DS is different from the well known dynamics of excitable media, whose behavior stems from the (local) excitability present in the system without spatial degrees of freedom. Excitability of DS is an emergent behavior, arising through the spatial interaction and not present locally. Moreover, the interaction between different excitable DS can be used to build alloptical logical gates [15].In real systems, however, typically solitons are static, so oscillatory or excitable DS are far from being generic. In this work we present a mechanism that generically induces dynamical regimes, such as oscillations and excitable behavior, in which the structure of the DS is preserved. The mechanism relies on the interplay between spatial inhomogeneities and drift, and therefore can be implemented under very general conditions. Inhomogeneities, or defects, are unavoidable in any experimental setup, and drift is also often present in many optical, fluid and chemical systems, due to misalignments of the mirrors [16,17], nonlinear crystal birefringence [18], or parameter gradients [19], in the first case, and due to the flow of a fluid in the others [20,21]. Roughly speaking, the presence of inhomogeneities and drift introduce two competing effects. On the one hand, an inhomogeneity pins a DS at a fixed position and, on the other, the drift tries to pull it out. If the drift overcomes the pinning, DS solitons are released from the in...

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“…On the one hand, 1D cavity solitons have been recently demonstrated in a Kerrlike optical cavity [42] with a noninstantaneous nonlinearity, and we argue that spatial rocking should be effective as well as temporal rocking, whenever the time scale of rocking is fast as compared with the time scale of the nonlinearity. On the other hand, injected vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers below threshold [33,53,54] are most promising devices for the generation and use of optical cavity solitons and display an effective nonlinearity with a large imaginary (dispersive) part.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 79%

“…The latter can be excitable and can be used as bits for logical operations [41]. Recent experiments are demonstrating some of those predictions [15,42]. The present work considers a type of injected signal that differs from previous studies in Kerr cavities, and which endows such systems with relevant properties such as phase bistability (unlike the phase monostability inherent in the Lugiato-Lefever model [34]) and the type of dissipative structures associated with it.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Phase-bistable Kerr cavity solitons and patterns

Valcárcel

Staliūnas

2013

Phys. Rev. A

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We study pattern formation in a passive nonlinear optical cavity on the basis of the classic Lugiato-Lefever model with a periodically modulated injection. When the injection amplitude sign alternates, e.g., following a sinusoidal modulation in time or in space, a phase-bistable response emerges, which is at the root of the spatial pattern formation in the system. An asymptotic description is given in terms of a damped nonlinear Schrödinger equation with parametric amplification, which allows gaining insight into the basic spatiotemporal dynamics of the system. One-and two-dimensional phase-bistable spatial patterns, such as bright and dark-ring cavity solitons and labyrinths, are demonstrated.

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Experimental evidence of dissipative spatial solitons in an optical passive Kerr cavity

Cited by 28 publications

References 43 publications

Experimental observation of front propagation in a negatively diffractive inhomogeneous Kerr cavity

Experimental observation of front propagation in a negatively diffractive inhomogeneous Kerr cavity

Dissipative Soliton Excitability Induced by Spatial Inhomogeneities and Drift

Phase-bistable Kerr cavity solitons and patterns

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