All-optical switching in a two-channel waveguide with cubic-quintic nonlinearity

Abstract

We consider dynamics of spatial beams in a dual-channel waveguide with competing cubic and quintic (CQ) nonlinearities. Gradually increasing the power in the input channel, we identify four different regimes of the pulses coupling into the cross channel, which alternate three times between full pass and full stop, thus suggesting three realizations of switching between the channels. As in the case of the Kerr (solely cubic) nonlinearity, the first two regimes are the linear one, and one dominated by the self-focusing nonlinearity, with the beam which, respectively, periodically couples between the channels, or stays in the input channel. Further increase of the power reveals two novel transmission regimes, one characterized by balance between the competing nonlinearities, which again allows full coupling between the channels, and a final regime dominated by the self-defocusing quintic nonlinearity. In the latter case, the situation resembles that known for a self-repulsive Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well potential, which is characterized by strong symmetry breaking; accordingly, the beam again abides in the input channel, contrary to an intuitive expectation that the self-defocusing nonlinearity would push it into the cross channel. The numerical results are qualitatively explained by a simple analytical model based on the variational approximation.

Journal of Physics B (in press)

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• Symmetry breaking of spatial Kerr solitons in fractional dimension
• Symmetric and asymmetric solitons in linearly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in optical lattices
• Families of spatial solitons in a two-channel waveguide with the cubic-quintic nonlinearity
• Spontaneous soliton symmetry breaking in two-dimensional coupled Bose-Einstein condensates supported by optical lattices
• Interface solitons in one-dimensional locally-coupled lattice systems
• Surface solitons in trilete lattices
• Symmetric and asymmetric solitons in dual-core couplers with competing quadratic and cubic nonlinearities
• Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking In Nonlinear Binary Periodic Systems
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking and the dynamics of three interacting nonlinear optical resonators with gain and loss