Optoacoustic solitons in Bragg gratings

Optical gap solitons, which exist due to a balance of nonlinearity and dispersion due to a Bragg grating, can couple to acoustic waves through electrostriction. This gives rise to a new species of "gap-acoustic" solitons (GASs), for which we find exact analytic solutions. The GAS consists...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 98; no. 24; p. 243902
Main Authors Tasgal, Richard S, Band, Y B, Malomed, Boris A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 15.06.2007
Online AccessGet more information

Cover

More Information
Summary:Optical gap solitons, which exist due to a balance of nonlinearity and dispersion due to a Bragg grating, can couple to acoustic waves through electrostriction. This gives rise to a new species of "gap-acoustic" solitons (GASs), for which we find exact analytic solutions. The GAS consists of an optical pulse similar to the optical gap soliton, dressed by an accompanying phonon pulse. Close to the speed of sound, the phonon component is large. In subsonic (supersonic) solitons, the phonon pulse is a positive (negative) density variation. Coupling to the acoustic field damps the solitons' oscillatory instability, and gives rise to a distinct instability for supersonic solitons, which may make the GAS decelerate and change direction, ultimately making the soliton subsonic.
ISSN:0031-9007
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.243902