Observation and analysis of creation, decay, and regeneration of annular soliton clusters in a lossy cubic-quintic optical medium

Abstract

We observe and analyze formation, decay, and subsequent regeneration of ring-shaped clusters of (2+1)dimensional spatial solitons (filaments) in a medium with cubic-quintic (focusing-defocusing) self-interaction and strong dissipative nonlinearity. The cluster of filaments, which remains stable over ≈17.5 Rayleigh lengths, is produced by the azimuthal modulational instability from a parent ring-shaped beam with embedded vorticity l = 1. In the course of still longer propagation, the stability of the soliton cluster is lost under the action of nonlinear losses. The annular cluster is then spontaneously regenerated due to power transfer from the reservoir provided by the unsplit part of the parent vortex ring. Thus, a secondary interval of the robust propagation of the regenerated cluster is identified. The experiments use a laser beam (at wavelength 800 nm), built of pulses with temporal duration 150 fs, at the repetition rate of 1 kHz, propagating in a cell filled by liquid carbon disulfide. Numerical calculations, based on a modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation which includes the cubic-quintic refractive terms and nonlinear losses, provide results in close agreement with the experimental findings.

Split-step birefringence simulation method for optical Kerr gates

“…Diffraction, nonlinear refraction, and nonlinear loss of the switch beam must be considered within the framework of the continuous wave model. If liquid CS2 is excited using the femtosecond pulses with peak intensities of up to hundreds of GW/cm2, it behaves as a cubic-quintic (focusing-defocusing) refractive medium 12 . Furthermore, we describe the nonlinear losses associated with multiphoton absorption and light scattering in CS2 using a theoretical wave-coupled model 13 .…”

“…For the liquid CS2, n=1.606, n2=−2.1×10−15 cm2/W, and n4 =−2.0×10−27 cm2/W2 12 . The extinction coefficient αNL, which indicates nonlinear losses, is expressed intensity-dependently as αNL=α′exp[(|Eswitch|2−Ith)/Iδ]−exp(−Ith/Iδ)Ith/Iδ+exp[(|Eswitch…”

Metastable soliton necklaces supported by fractional diffraction and competing nonlinearities

“…The CQ terms may be similarly induced by a sample of an optical material combining the self-focusing and defocusing cubic and quintic nonlinearities, whose absorption is low enough to be neglected. This may be, as mentioned above, carbon disulfide in the liquid form, which was used for the creation of stable (2+1)-dimensional spatial solitons [80], quasi-stable (2+1)-dimensional optical solitons with embedded vorticity [81], and, very recently, of quasi-stable necklace arrays of optical beams with imprinted vorticity [20]. Another appropriate CQ material is a colloidal suspension of metallic nanoparticles, in which strengths of cubic and quintic nonlinearities may be accurately adjusted by selecting the size and concentration of the particles [82].…”

“…In particular, the creation of nearly stable necklace patterns with imprinted overall vorticity in a medium with the cubic-quintic (CQ) nonlinearity (liquid carbon disulfide) was very recently reported in Ref. [20].…”

Dark gap solitons in periodic nonlinear media with competing cubic-quintic nonlinearities

“…High-order nonlinearity like the quintic nonlinear term [14,15,16,17] also exists in dense media or for high density wave propagation, the combination of which with cubic nonlinearity forms the cubic-quintic (nonlinearity) media [18,19,20,21,22,23], where the high-order nonlinear term takes the self-defocusing, while the cubic term can be either self-focusing or self-defocusing [24,25,26,27,28]. It should be pointed out that, in two-and three-dimensional models, the competing cubic-quintic nonlinearity of the media can stabilize more complicated wave structures including the multidimensional solitons and their vortical ones (the solitons with embedded vorticity) [25,29,30], ring-shaped soliton clusters [31]. In addition, theoretical predictions [32,33] and experimental confirmations [34,35,36] have demonstrated that the competing nonlinear terms, arising from meanfield term (atom-atom collisions) and beyond-mean-field term (quantum fluctuations) named by Lee-Huang-Yang quantum corrections [37,38,39], in the context of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) could give rise to stable matter wave states called quantum droplets from one to three dimensions.…”