Impact of loss on the wave dynamics in photonic waveguide lattices

Abstract

We analyze the impact of loss in lattices of coupled optical waveguides and find that in such case, the hopping between adjacent waveguides is necessarily complex. This results not only in a transition of the light spreading from ballistic to diffusive, but also in a new kind of diffraction that is caused by loss dispersion. We prove our theoretical results with experimental observations.

Accepted for publication in PRL, 5+8 pages (Paper + Supplemental material), 4 figures

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