Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Lluis Torner.
We present the experimental observation of scalar multipole solitons in highly nonlocal nonlinear media, including dipole, tripole, quadrupole, and necklace-type solitons, organized as arrays of out-of-phase bright spots. These complex solitons are metastable, but with a large parameters range where the instability is weak, permitting their experimental observation.
We reveal that lattice interfaces imprinted in nonlocal nonlinear media support surface solitons that do not exist in other similar settings, including interfaces of local and nonlocal uniform materials. We show the impact of nonlocality on the domains of existence and stability of the surface solitons, focusing on new types of dipole solitons residing partially inside the optical lattice. We find that such solitons feature strongly asymmetric shapes and that they are stable in large parts of their existence domain.
We discover that, at the edge of an optical lattice imprinted in a saturable nonlinear medium, one-dimensional surface solitons exist only within a band of light intensities and that they cease to exist when the lattice depth exceeds an upper threshold. We also reveal the generation of arrays of two-dimensional surface solitons mediated by the transverse modulational instability of one-dimensional solitons, a process that is found to exhibit specific features associated to properties of the optical lattice.
We discover multipole-mode solitons supported by the surface between two distinct periodic lattices imprinted in Kerr-type nonlinear media. Such solitons are possible because the refractive index modulation at both sides of the interface glues together their out-of-phase individual constituents. Remarkably, we find that the new type of solitons may feature highly asymmetric shapes, and yet they are stable over wide domains of their existence, a rare property to be attributed to their surface nature.
We predict new phenomena, such as soliton steering and soliton fission, in optical lattices that fade away exponentially along the propagation direction. Such lattices, featuring tunable decay rates, arise in photorefractive crystals in the wavelength range 360-400 nm. We show that the predicted phenomena offer different opportunities for soliton control.
We address the impact of the asymmetric nonlocal diffusion nonlinearity of gap solitons supported by photorefractive crystals with an imprinted optical lattice. We reveal how the asymmetric nonlocal response alters the domains of existence and the stability of solitons originating from different gaps. We find that in such media gap solitons cease to exist above a threshold of the nonlocality degree. We discuss how the interplay between nonlocality and lattice strength modifies the gap soliton mobility.
We introduce vector soliton complexes in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear media. We discover that under proper conditions the combination of nonlocality and vectorial coupling has a remarkable stabilizing action on multihumped solitons. In particular, we find that stable bound states featuring several field oscillations in each soliton component do exist. This affords stabilization of vector soliton trains incorporating a large number of humps, a class of structures known to self-destroy via strong instabilities in scalar settings.
We show that multipole solitons can be made stable via vectorial coupling in bulk nonlocal nonlinear media. Such vector solitons are composed of mutually incoherent nodeless and multipole components jointly inducing a nonlinear refractive index profile. We found that stabilization of the otherwise highly unstable multipoles occurs below certain maximum energy flow. Such a threshold is determined by the nonlocality degree.
We put forward the existence of surface gap solitons at the interface between uniform media and an optical lattice with defocusing nonlinearity. Such new type of solitons forms when the incident and reflected waves at the interface of the lattice experience Bragg scattering, and feature a combination of the unique properties of both surface waves and gap solitons. We discover that gap surface solitons exist only when the lattice depth exceeds a threshold value, that they can be made completely stable, and that they can form stable bound states.
We address basic properties and stability of two-dimensional solitons in photonic lattices induced by the nondiffracting Mathieu beams. Such lattices allow for smooth topological transformation of radially symmetric Bessel lattices into quasi-one-dimensional periodic ones. The transformation of lattice topology drastically affects the properties of ground-state and dipole-mode solitons, including their shape, stability, and transverse mobility.
Broadband light generation is demonstrated by noncollinear spontaneous parametric downconversion with a cw pump laser. By use of a suitable noncollinear phase-matching geometry and a tightly focused pump beam, downconverted signals that feature a bell-shaped spectral distribution with a bandwidth approaching 200 nm are obtained. As an application of the generated broadband light, submicrometer axial resolution in an optical coherence tomography scheme is demonstrated; a free-space resolution down to 0.8 microm was achieved.
We put forward properties of solitons supported by optical lattices featuring topological dislocations and show that solitons experience attractive and repulsive forces around the dislocations. Suitable arrangements of dislocations are even found to form soliton traps, and the properties of such solitons are shown to crucially depend on the trap topology. The uncovered phenomenon opens a new concept for soliton control and manipulation, e.g., in disk-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates.
We address the stability of multipole-mode solitons in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear media. Such solitons comprise several out-of-phase peaks packed together by the forces acting between them. We discover that dipole-, triple-, and quadrupole-mode solitons can be made stable, whereas all higher-order soliton bound states are unstable.
We address the existence and properties of lossless surface waves that form at interfaces between magnetic and birefringent media. We show that the angular domain of existence of Dyakonov surface waves for magnetic interfaces is significantly larger than that for nonmagnetic ones. Our results have important implications for the experimental generation of surface waves and for their potential applications based on guided-to-leaky transitions.
We address the existence of vortex solitons supported by azimuthally modulated lattices and reveal how the global lattice discrete symmetry has fundamental implications on the possible topological charges of solitons. We set a general "charge rule" using group-theory techniques, which holds for all lattices belonging to a given symmetry group. Focusing on the case of Bessel lattices allows us to derive also an overall stability rule for the allowed vortex solitons.
We address the impact of nonlocality in the physical features exhibited by solitons supported by Kerr-type nonlinear media with an imprinted optical lattice. We discover that the nonlocality of the nonlinear response can profoundly affect the soliton mobility, hence all the related phenomena. Such behavior manifests itself in significant reductions of the Peierls-Nabarro potential with an increase in the degree of nonlocality, a result that opens the rare possibility in nature of almost radiationless propagation of highly localized solitons across the lattice.
We demonstrate the excitation of solitons in a parametric amplifier with enhanced signal content through the use of a chirped-period quasi-phase-matching grating. This technique affords a low soliton threshold at the input end of a parametric amplifier, and the subsequent transformation to a desired soliton that exists at nonzero wave-vector mismatch through the use of a linearly chirped quasi-phase-matching grating. This approach has an advantage over direct excitation of solitons at nonzero wave-vector mismatch in uniform nonlinear materials and holds potential for improving the efficiency and mode quality of high-gain parametric amplifiers.
We report on the phenomenon of controllable soliton dragging by dynamic optical lattices induced by three imbalanced interfering plane waves. Because of such an imbalance, the transverse momentum of the lattice does not vanish, and thus the dynamic lattice can cause soliton dragging. The dragging rate is shown to depend on the amplitude and on the angle of incidence of the third plane wave making the optical lattice.