Surface waves at the boundary of a chiral medium

The exact analytical solution of the dispersion relation for the propagation constant of the surface waves existing at the plane interface between chiral and magnetodielectric media is given and studied. An enhancement of the chirality effect due to matching of the permittivities of the media is noted.     

Bistable switching using an optical Tamm cavity with a Kerr medium

All-optical bistable switching is proposed to realize by using an optical Tamm cavity in which a Kerr medium is sandwiched between a metal layer and a Bragg mirror. Results show that the excitation of clockwise and counterclockwise bistable switching under the control of external optical injection is due to the presence of optical Tamm states. In addition, the bistable characteristics of optical Tamm cavities are found to be sensitive to the polarization of external optical injection.     

Basic properties of nonlinear surface charge waves at a plasma boundary

The nonlinear properties of surface charges are here analyzed under ideal conditions. We thus deduce a new single equation from the wellknown equations which govern the cold electron plasma motion. Simple formulas that describe the propagation of surface charge perturbations along the plasma boundary are also found.     

Traveling waves in a nonlinear medium with cubic nonlinearity

Unlike linear nondispersive media, which allow propagation of wave packets of arbitrary forms, nonlinear media admit only certain profiles of traveling waves. Here we examine media with Duffing oscillators, i.e., with bound electrons for which an equilibrium disturbance causes forces proportional to the first and third powers of deviation. We show that the linearly polarized traveling plane waves such media can transmit have profiles modulated as Jacobi elliptic functions. When discussing propagation across an interface between different media, only incidence from the side of the linear medium is considered. Even in this case, to launch a traveling wave in the nonlinear medium, a severe restriction must be imposed on the incident wave’s amplitude.     

Controllable optical bistability of Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical cavity with a Kerr medium

We study the optical bistability for a Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms in a driven optical cavity with a Kerr medium. We find that both the threshold point of optical bistability transition and the width of optical bistability hysteresis can be controlled by appropriately adjusting the Kerr interaction between the photons. In particular, we show that the optical bistability will disappear when the Kerr interaction exceeds a critical value.     

Spatiotemporal instability in dispersive nonlinear Kerr medium with a finite response time

We investigated the spatiotemporal modulation instability (MI) in a medium with a non-instantaneous Kerr response in which the nonlinear contribution to the refractive index is governed by a relaxing Debye type equation. The expression for the MI gain spectrum in non-instantaneous Kerr medium is obtained, which clearly reveals the influence of the finite time of the nonlinear response (relaxation effect) on the spatiotemporal MI. It is shown that, due to the relaxation effect, the spatiotemporal MI can appear for the case of anomalous dispersion and defocusing nonlinearity, while it cannot appear in instantaneous Kerr medium for the same case, and a new MI gain spectrum appears, adding to the conventional MI gain spectrum similar to that in an instantaneous Ker medium. In addition, the bandwidth of MI gain spectrum is extended and the maximum MI gain is reduced with increasing of the relaxation time. Interestingly, spatiotemporal MI can appear for any spatial frequencies in non-instantaneous Kerr medium for any combination of dispersion and nonlinearity. We have performed an experiment of MI in carbon disulfide (CS₂), a typical non-instantaneous Kerr medium, which shows quantitative agreement with the theoretical analyses.     

Rectification effect in asymmetric Kerr nonlinear medium

Based on the transfer matrix method, the recursion of an electromagnetic wave propagating in an asymmetric Kerr nonlinear medium is analytically formulated, from which the rectification effect is clearly presented. The effects on the rectification regioh of the linear part and nonlinear coefficient of permittivity are both studied, and the energy densities before and after rectification are discussed. We use a rectifying factor to describe the intensity of the rectification effect. The result shows that every transmission peak is divided into two parts when the symmetry is broken, and nonlinear asymmetry has a more significant effect on the rectification effect than the linear asymmetry. The rectification intensity and area will be enlarged when the asymmetry factor is increased in a certain range.     

Surface-type waves on the boundary of a metal with a plasma-molecular medium

The influence of the molecular subsystem on the properties of surface-type waves (STW’s) propagating along a plasma-metal boundary is examined with consideration of the thermal motion of the electrons. The dynamics of the molecular subsystem is described using the equation for the polarization vector, which is equivalent to a quantum-mechanical treatment of a rarefied gas with phenomenological consideration of the dissipation. A dispersion equation for surface-type waves is obtained. The molecular subsystem influences both the phase velocity of the waves and the penetration depth. In the case of a weakly ionized medium there is a forbidden frequency band for surface-type waves. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 67, 47–49 (December 1997)     

Amplification of a phase-conjugate signal in a nonlinear absorptive Kerr medium

We present the results of amplification of the phase-conjugate reflectivity in an absorptive nonlinear Kerr medium by nondegenerate four-wave mixing. The influence of two-beam coupling on the phase-conjugate signal is observed and analyzed. The frequency domain response of nondegenerate four-wave mixing produces a tunable narrow-band optical filter.     

Stability of weakly nonparaxial spatial optical solitons in a medium with a Kerr nonlinearity

A variant of perturbation theory is developed to determine the characteristics and stability of transversely two-dimensional spatial solitons in a Kerr medium under conditions of small deviations from paraxial. Distributions of the transverse and longitudinal components of the soliton electric and magnetic fields are obtained. It is shown that the power of a nonparaxial soliton in a Kerr medium increases as the propagation constant increases. A linear analysis is made of soliton stability. In addition to confirming stability, this analysis revealed “internal modes” of nonparaxial solitons and their characteristics were determined.     

Transmission of waves by a nonlinear random medium

We study analytically and numerically the effect of nonlinearity on transmission of waves through a random medium. We introduce and analyze quantities associated with the scattering problem that clarify the lack of uniqueness due to the nonlinearity as well as the localization of waves due to the random inhomogeneities. We show that nonlinearity tends to delocalize the waves and that for very large scattering regions the average transmitted energy is small.     

Coupled nonlinear waves in a composite magnetic-semiconducting medium

In this Letter we investigate the propagation of coupled nonlinear Alfven-spin and helicon-spin waves in a composite medium having the properties of both magnetic and semiconducting materials. We arrive at the nonlinear evolution equations for these coupled waves using the reductive perturbation method for which we obtain soliton solutions. We also discuss the limiting cases for the two materials separately.     

Ultrafast optical switching in Kerr nonlinear photonic crystals

Nonlinear photonic crystals made from polystyrene materials that have Kerr nonlinearity can exhibit ultrafast optical switching when the samples are pumped by ultrashort optical pulses with high intensity due to the change of the refractive index of polystyrene and subsequent shift of the band gap edge or defect state resonant frequency. Polystyrene has a large Kerr nonlinear susceptibility and almost instantaneous response to pump light, making it suitable for the realization of ultrafast optical switching with a response time as short as a few femtoseconds. In this paper, we review our experimental progress on the continual improvement of all-optical switching speed in two-dimensional and three-dimensional polystyrene nonlinear photonic crystals in the past years. Several relevant issues are discussed and analyzed, including different mechanisms for all-optical switching, preparation of nonlinear photonic crystal samples by means of microfabrication and self-assembly techniques, characterization of optical switching performance by means of femtosecond pump-probe technique, and different ways to lower the pump power of optical switching to facilitate practical applications in optical information processing. Finally, a brief summary and a perspective of future work are provided.