Optical Pulse Dynamics in Active Metamaterials with Positive and Negative Refractive Index

Abstract

We study numerically the propagation of two-color light pulses through a metamaterial doped with active atoms such that the carrier frequencies of the pulses are in resonance with two atomic transitions in the $\Lambda$ configuration and that one color propagates in the regime of positive refraction and the other in the regime of negative refraction. In such a metamaterial, one resonant color of light propagates with positive and the other with negative group velocity. We investigate nonlinear interaction of these forward- and backward-propagating waves, and find self-trapped waves, counter-propagating radiation waves, and hot spots of medium excitation.

9 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Nonlinear properties of left-handed metamaterials
• Negative refraction in Al:ZnO/ZnO metamaterial in the near-infrared
• Non-magnetic left-handed material
• Nonlinear surface waves in left-handed materials
• Optical Bistability in Nonlinear Optical Coupler with Negative Index Channel
• Nonlinear optical effects in artificial materials
• Effect of an Optical Negative Index Thin Film on Optical Bistability
• Quadratic Solitons in Negative Refractive Index Medium

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Spontaneous isotropy breaking for vortices in nonlinear left-handed metamaterials