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HAIT Journal of Science and Engineering Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 363-377 © 2004 Holon Academic Institute of Technology | ||||||
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Stable soliton vs collapse dynamics of short laser pulses in nonlinear structures with intermediate dimensionality
D. Cheskis1, S. Bar-Ad1,*, R. Morandotti2,
J.S. Aitchison3, H.S. Eisenberg4,5, Y. Silberberg5, and D. Ross6
1School of Physics and Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler | Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel 2INRS-Énergie et Matériaux, Univérsite du Québec, Varennes, Québec J3X 1S2, Canada 3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G4, Canada 4Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA 5Department of Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel 6Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK *Corresponding author: shimshon@post.tau.ac.il Received 15 October 2003, accepted 5 March 2004
| We investigate the propagation of short laser pulses in arrays of coupled nonlinear waveguides. In the experiment we inject intense 60-fs pulses into planar silica waveguide arrays, with the laser tuned to the anomalous dispersion regime. Depending on the excitation conditions, either collapse dynamics is observed, or trapping of the pulse in a single waveguide. The collapse dynamics in these intermediate dimensionality structures are similar to those previously observed in the perfect two-dimensional configuration. On the other hand, an extremely sharp transition is observed, from strong diffraction at low powers to strong localization at high powers, when the pulses are injected into a single waveguide. This behavior suggests the existence of a range of parameters where quasi-stable spatiotemporal solitons may form. Our numerical simulations demonstrate that high-order dispersion is essential for an effective arrest of the collapse in these Kerr media, and lend further support to the interpretation of the experimental data as an indication for quasi-stable propagation.
___________________ | Presented at Russian-Israeli Conference Frontiers in Condensed Matter Physics Shoresh, Israel, 19-24 October 2003 |