Observation of rotation-induced light localization in waveguide arrays

Abstract

We study both, experimentally and theoretically, propagation of light in the fs-laser written rotating square waveguide arrays and present the first experimental evidence of light localization induced by the rotation of periodic structure in the direction of light propagation. Such linear light localization occurs either in the corners of truncated square array, where it results from the interplay between the centrifugal effect and total internal reflection at the borders of truncated array, or in the center of array, where rotation creates effective attractive optical potential. The degree of localization of linear bulk and corner modes emerging due to the rotation increases with the increase of rotation frequency. Consequently, corner and bulk solitons in rotating wave-guide arrays become thresholdless for sufficiently large rotation frequencies, in contrast to solitons in non-rotating arrays that exist only above power threshold. Focusing nonlinearity enhances localization degree of corner modes, but surprising initially it leads to broadening of bulk nonlinear states, followed by their re-localization at high input powers. Our results open new prospects for control of evolution of nonlinear multidimensional excitations by dynamically varying potentials.

arXiv comment7 pages, 5 figures, to be appear on ACS Photonics

References in corpus (17)

• Photonic Floquet Topological Insulators
• Fundamental and vortex solitons in a two-dimensional optical lattice
• Spatial Solitons in Optically-Induced Gratings
• Three-Dimensional Light Bullets in Arrays of Waveguides
• Observation of surface gap solitons in semi-infinite waveguide arrays
• Observation of two-dimensional surface solitons in anisotropic waveguide arrays
• Nontrivial coupling of light into a defect: the interplay of nonlinearity and topology
• Observation of edge solitons in topological trimer arrays
• Weakly nonlinear topological gap solitons in Su-Schrieffer-Heeger photonic lattices
• Vortex solitons in twisted circular waveguide arrays
• Robust ultrashort light bullets in strongly twisted waveguide arrays
• Two-dimensional discrete solitons in rotating lattices
• Observation of twist-induced geometric phases and inhibition of optical tunneling via Aharonov-Bohm effects
• Nonlinear waves of Bose-Einstein condensates in rotating ring lattice potentials
• Light dynamics in nonlinear trimers and twisted multicore fibers
• Localized waves supported by the rotating waveguide array
• Thresholdless surface solitons