Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Lluis Torner.
We report on the effect of parametric amplification of spatial soliton swinging in Kerr-type nonlinear media with longitudinal and transverse periodic modulation of the linear refractive index. The parameter areas are found where the soliton center motion is analogous to the motion of a parametrically driven pendulum. This effect has potential applications for controllable soliton steering.
We report on the existence of multicolor solitons supported by periodic lattices made from quadratic nonlinear media. Such lattice solitons bridge the gap between continuous solitons in uniform media and discrete solitons in strongly localized systems and exhibit a wealth of new features. We discovered that, in contrast to uniform media, multipeaked lattice solitons are stable. Thus they open new opportunities for all-optical switching based on soliton packets.
We report on the phenomenon of trapping and switching of one-dimensional spatial solitons in Kerr-type nonlinear media with transverse periodic modulation of the refractive index. The solitons slowly radiate upon propagation along the periodic structure and are finally trapped in one of its guiding channels. The position of the output channel can be varied by small changes in the launching angle.
We report the results of numerical studies of the fission of N-soliton bound states at the interface formed by a Kerr nonlinear medium and a linear dielectric in a planar waveguide. A variety of effects are shown to occur, with applications to all-optical eigenvalue soliton control.
We show that transverse engineering of quasi-phase-matched geometries can be used to tailor the spatial mode function that describes the quantum state of photon pairs generated in spontaneous parametric down-conversion. We study several geometries and reveal how properly engineered gratings affect, in particular, the spatial correlations embedded in two-photon entangled states.
We report the first experimental observation, to our knowledge, of the self-trapping of light in walk-off-compensating optical tandems. The experiment was conducted with picosecond light pulses in a ten-plate optically contacted tandem made of potassium titanyl phosphate prepared for phase matching along a special geometry featuring a huge local walk-off. The observation should open the door to the exploration of multicomponent soliton formation in new classes of materials and settings.
We study the existence and stability of periodic-wave arrays propagating in uniform quadratic nonlinear media and discover that they become completely stable above a threshold light intensity. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example in physics of completely stable periodic-wave patterns propagating in conservative uniform media supporting bright solitons.
We address the properties of (1+1)-dimensional periodic waves in conservative saturable cubic nonlinear media and discover that cnoidal- and snoidal-type waves are completely stable within a broad range of parameters. The existence of stability bands is in sharp contrast with the previously known properties of periodic waves in self-focusing Kerr nonlinear media. We also found that in self-defocusing media instability bands occur, again in contrast to the case of Kerr media.
We demonstrate an experimental scheme that allows the elucidation of the orbital angular momentum discrete spectrum of an arbitrary light signal. The orbital angular momentum spectrum is represented in a Laguerre-Gaussian mode base, and the spectral components are resolved in the frequency domain by exploiting the Doppler frequency shift that is imparted to rotating light beams.
The reflection of bulk quadratic solutions incident onto a quadratically nonlinear interface in periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate was observed. The interface consisted of the boundary between two quasi-phase-matched regions displaced from each other by a half-period. At high intensities and small angles of incidence the soliton is reflected.
We report the existence and basic properties of dark snoidal-type waves self-sustained in quadratic nonlinear media. Using a stability analysis technique, we reveal that they are almost completely stable, or metastable, in suitable ranges of input energy flows and material parameters. This opens the way to the experimental observation of dark-type multicolor periodic wave patterns supported by quadratic nonlinearities.
We report on the existence and properties of breathing periodic cnoidal pulse trains propagating in dispersion managed systems with piecewise constant dispersion. Our numerical investigations show that the dispersion management enhances the robustness of the periodic cnoidal pulse trains in comparison to the pulse trains existing in a uniform medium. The concept might have direct applications to pulse trains generated by mode-locked fiber lasers.
We report the observation of deflection of optical solitons generated in the frequency doubling of light beams containing edgelike topological amplitude and phase dislocations. The angular deflection of the solitons was found to be controllable through the position of the dislocation. The experiments were conducted near phase matching in a bulk potassium titanyl phosphate crystal pumped with picosecond light pulses at 1064 nm.
We put forward a mechanism for tailoring, and even arresting, the collapse of wave packets in nonlinear media, whose dynamics is governed by nonlocal two-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger-like equations. The key ingredient of the scheme is the self-generation of nonlocal nonlinearities mediated by wave rectification.
We report theoretically the existence, classification, and basic properties of families of stationary two-dimensional cnoidal-type waves in bulk Kerr-type saturable nonlinear media. The families of two-dimensional cnoidal-type wave solutions are shown to exhibit richer features than their known one-dimensional counterparts. At low- and high-energy flows, the cnoidal patterns are predicted to be robust enough to be observable experimentally.
We report the existence of whole families of stationary cnoidal, periodic wave patterns in quadratic nonlinear media. We study the main physical features of the multicolored light patterns, including their shape, contrast, multifrequency energy sharing, asymptotics in the cascading limit, and excitation. Our numerical simulations predict that the cnoidal waves with high and even with moderate contrasts are robust enough against modulational instabilities to be experimentally observable.
We report the experimental observation of the formation of multiple optical quadratic solitons in a process mediated by the amplification of minute asymmetries in the diffraction properties of the input light. Experiments were conducted in phase-matched second-harmonic generation in a bulk crystal of periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate pumped at 1064 nm. The different mechanisms that influence the process were investigated numerically, and the pulsed nature of the pump light was found to play a key role in the observed light distributions.
We show how to generate robust self-sustained clusters of soliton bullets-spatiotemporal (optical or matter-wave) solitons. The clusters carry an orbital angular momentum being supported by competing nonlinearities. The "atoms" forming the "molecule" are fully three-dimensional solitons linked via a staircaselike macroscopic phase. Recent progress in generating atomic-molecular coherent mixing in the Bose-Einstein condensates might open potential scenarios for the experimental generation of these soliton molecules with matter waves.