Visual Observation of Zener Tunneling

Trompeter, Henrike; Pertsch, Thomas; Lederer, F.; Michaelis, Dirk; Streppel, Ulrich; Bräuer, Andreas; Peschel, Ulf

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.96.023901

Cited by 206 publications

(82 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…While scattering of the electron prevents Bloch oscillations in bulk crystals, they have been observed in a number of equivalent systems, such as semiconductor superlattices 6 , atomic systems 7,8 , arrays of coupled dielectric waveguides 9,10 and periodic dielectric systems 11 . Other examples for the ability to map wave phenomena among different physical systems are Zener tunnelling in optical lattices 12,13 , as well as the analogy between the ballistic motion of an electronic wave packet in a tight-binding lattice 14 and discrete diffraction of light in a waveguide array 15,16 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Bloch oscillations in plasmonic waveguide arrays

et al. 2014

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The combination of modern nanofabrication techniques and advanced computational tools has opened unprecedented opportunities to mold the flow of light. In particular, discrete photonic structures can be designed such that the resulting light dynamics mimics quantum mechanical condensed matter phenomena. By mapping the time-dependent probability distribution of an electronic wave packet to the spatial light intensity distribution in the corresponding photonic structure, the quantum mechanical evolution can be visualized directly in a coherent, yet classical wave environment. On the basis of this approach, several groups have recently observed discrete diffraction, Bloch oscillations and Zener tunnelling in different dielectric structures. Here we report the experimental observation of discrete diffraction and Bloch oscillations of surface plasmon polaritons in evanescently coupled plasmonic waveguide arrays. The effective external potential is tailored by introducing an appropriate transverse index gradient during nanofabrication of the arrays. Our experimental results are in excellent agreement with numerical calculations.

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confidence: 99%

Bloch oscillations in plasmonic waveguide arrays

et al. 2014

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“…It is worth stressing that the dynamics depicted in Fig. 1 cannot be considered as an initial stage of Bloch oscillations that take place in linear systems [5][6][7]. In our model the strongly nonlinear excitations experience only small modulations due to the presence of a shallow lattice and their diffraction spreading is balanced mostly by nonlinearity.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Bloch oscillations and Zener tunneling [5][6][7] are just salient examples of effects that arise in the linear regime of light propagation in periodic optical media, while discrete and lattice solitons [8][9][10][11][12][13] as well as complex soliton trains [14] are examples of the possibilities afforded by the addition of nonlinearity. All these phenomena occur in regular, periodic or weakly modulated lattices.…”

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confidence: 99%

Soliton percolation in random optical lattices

Kartashov¹,

Vysloukh²,

Torner³

2007

Opt. Express

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Abstract:We introduce soliton percolation phenomena in the nonlinear transport of light packets in suitable optical lattices with random properties. Specifically, we address lattices with a gradient of the refractive index in the transverse plane, featuring stochastic phase or amplitude fluctuations, and we discover the existence of a disorder-induced transition between soliton-insulator and soliton-conductor regimes. The soliton current is found to reach its maximal value at intermediate disorder levels and to drastically decrease in oth, almost regular and strongly disordered lattices. b impurities in an inhomogeneous discrete nonlinear Schrödinger system," Phys. Rev. E 53, 6476 (1996). 18. P G. Kevrekidis, Y. S. Kivshar, and A. S. Kovalev, "Instabilities and bifurcations of nonlinear impurity modes,"Phys. Rev. E 67, 046604 (2003).

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“…This simple physical mechanism, called discrete diffraction, has profound implications on the macroscopic behaviour of a WGA as an optical medium, enabling a diversity of linear and nonlinear phenomena that are absent in continuous media. Among them are discrete solitons [3,4], Bloch-momentum dependent diffraction [5], Bloch oscillations [6] and surface Bloch oscillations [7,8], Rabi oscillations [9], Zener tunnelling [10], perfect or fractional revivals [11], discrete Talbot effect [12], and dynamic localization [13]. The peculiar behaviour of light inside waveguide lattices is owed to the photonic band structure that is associated with the periodic effective-index "potential".…”

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confidence: 99%

Band-specific phase engineering for curving and focusing light in waveguide arrays

Chremmos

Efremidis

2012

Phys. Rev. A

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Band specific design of curved light caustics and focusing in optical waveguide arrays is introduced. Going beyond the discrete, tightbinding model, which we examined recently, we show how the exact band structure and the associated diffraction relations of a periodic waveguide lattice can be exploited to phase-engineer caustics with predetermined convex trajectories or to achieve optimum aberration-free focal spots. We numerically demonstrate the formation of convex caustics involving the excitation of Floquet-Bloch modes within the first or the second band and even multi-band caustics created by the simultaneous excitation of more than one bands. Interference of caustics in abruptly autofocusing or collision scenarios are also examined. The experimental implementation of these ideas should be straightforward since the required input conditions involve phase-only modulation of otherwise simple optical wavefronts. By direct extension to more complex periodic lattices, possibilities open up for band specific curving and focusing of light inside 2D or even 3D photonic crystals.

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Visual Observation of Zener Tunneling

Cited by 206 publications

References 17 publications

Bloch oscillations in plasmonic waveguide arrays

Bloch oscillations in plasmonic waveguide arrays

Soliton percolation in random optical lattices

Band-specific phase engineering for curving and focusing light in waveguide arrays

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