In:
Nature Communications, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Vol. 6, No. 1 ( 2015-07-28)
Kurzfassung:
Controlling light transport in nonlinear active environments is a topic of considerable interest in the field of optics. In such complex arrangements, of particular importance is to devise strategies to subdue chaotic behaviour even in the presence of gain/loss and nonlinearity, which often assume adversarial roles. Quite recently, notions of parity-time (PT) symmetry have been suggested in photonic settings as a means to enforce stable energy flow in platforms that simultaneously employ both amplification and attenuation. Here we report the experimental observation of optical solitons in PT-symmetric lattices. Unlike other non-conservative nonlinear arrangements where self-trapped states appear as fixed points in the parameter space of the governing equations, discrete PT solitons form a continuous parametric family of solutions. The possibility of synthesizing PT-symmetric saturable absorbers, where a nonlinear wave finds a lossless path through an otherwise absorptive system is also demonstrated.
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
2041-1723
Sprache:
Englisch
Verlag:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publikationsdatum:
2015
ZDB Id:
2553671-0
