Observation of a Discrete Family of Dissipative Solitons in a Nonlinear Optical System

Abstract

We report on the observation of a discrete family of spatial dissipative solitons in a simple optical pattern forming system, which is based on a modified single-mirror feedback arrangement. After a pitchfork bifurcation the system possesses two (nearly) equivalent coexisting states of different polarizations. The spatial solitons correspond to excursions from one of the two states serving as a background state towards the other one. The members of the soliton family differ in the number of high-amplitude radial oscillations. The observations are in good agreement with numerical simulations and general expectations for dissipative solitons.

Chapter 6 Fundamentals and Applications of Spatial Dissipative Solitons in Photonic Devices

“…Though "incoherent" switching was obtained before in driven cavity or feedback systems (Maywar et al (2000); Schäpers et al (2000Schäpers et al ( , 2002; ; Pesch et al (2005); Barbay et al (2006)), the main route for control there is the phase of the WB with respect to the HB (and thus the CS) (Brambilla et al (1996); Spinelli et al (1998); Barland et al (2002); Hachair et al (2005)) leading to constructive or destructive interference and thus controlling locally the amplitude of the intra-cavity field. The insensitivity of the switching in CSL to phase is probably one of their major advantages in applications though it is probably fair to say that many aspects of the switching process and potentials for optimization are not well understood at this point (see also Sec.…”

“…Recent experiments performed with a cell of optically pumped sodium vapor in front of a single feedback mirror (see Fig. 33) have used polarization domains as equivalent but separate phases (Pesch et al (2005(Pesch et al ( , 2007). …”

Spontaneous motion of localized structures and localized patterns induced by delayed feedback

“…In two-dimensional (2D) settings, theoretical prediction of high degree of multistability between structures having different number of peaks was established for driven nonlinear planar cavities [6][7][8][9][10][11]. This prediction has been confirmed by experimental evidence of DLS in various nonlinear optical systems [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. Transverse optical structures can be either stationary or not.…”

“…Any eigenfunction Ψ μ of the operator L solves equation (17) which then leads to a transcendental equation for the eigenvalue λ + iω describing the stability of the solution u 0 in the presence of the feedback:…”

Bragg localized structures in a passive cavity with transverse modulation of the refractive index and the pump

“…The latter case corresponds to stationary localized pulses that are formed in the plane transverse to the beam propagation direction. They are often called cavity solitons, and have been observed experimentally in a wide class of optical systems: lasers with saturable absorber [5,6,7], liquid crystal light valve with optical feedback [8,9,10], single-mirror feedback systems using sodium vapor [11] and in semiconductor microresonators [12]. Recent research has demonstrated the existence of a new type of cavity localized structure associated with Bragg reflection in lasers with saturable absorbers [13,14], in discrete sets of coupled lasers [15,16] and resonators [17] and in photonic crystal films with Kerr nonlinearity under Fano resonance conditions [18].…”