Steering between Bloch oscillation and dipole oscillation in parabolic optical waveguide arrays

Abstract

We study the optical oscillations of supermodes in planar optical waveguide arrays with parabolically graded propagation constant in individual waveguide interacting through nearest neighbor couplings. In these arrays, we have identified a transition between a symmetric dipole oscillation (DO) and a symmetry-breaking Bloch oscillation (BO) under appropriate conditions. There exist obvious correspondences between gradon localization and various optical oscillations. By virtue of an analogue between the oscillation of optical system and that of a plane pendulum, we propose a shift of the graded profile to cause a transition from BO to DO. We confirm the optical transition by means of Hamiltonian optics, as well as by the field evolution of the supermodes. The results offer great potential applications in optical switching, which can be applied to design suitable optical devices.

Submitted to JOSA B for publications

References in corpus (4)

• Photonic Bloch oscillations and Zener tunneling in two-dimensional optical lattices
• Tunable photonic Bloch oscillations in electrically modulated photonic crystals
• Dipole and Bloch oscillations of cold atoms in a parabolic lattice
• Tunable Localization and Oscillation of Coupled Plasmon Waves in Graded Plasmonic Chains

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Tunable Hybridization at Mid Zone and Anomalous Bloch-Zener Oscillations in Optical Waveguide Ladders
• Delocalization of light in photonic lattices with unbounded potentials
• Photonic Bloch-dipole-Zener Oscillations in Binary Parabolic Optical Waveguide Arrays
• Chirped Bloch-Harmonic oscillations in a parametrically forced optical lattice
• Harmonic oscillations and their switching in elliptical optical waveguide arrays