Nonlinear photonic crystals: III. Cubic nonlinearity

Abstract

Weakly nonlinear interactions between wavepackets in a lossless periodic dielectric medium are studied based on the classical Maxwell equations with a cubic nonlinearity. We consider nonlinear processes such that: (i) the amplitude of the wave component due to the nonlinearity does not exceed the amplitude of its linear component; (ii) the spatial range of a probing wavepacket is much smaller than the dimension of the medium sample, and it is not too small compared with the dimension of the primitive cell. These nonlinear processes are naturally described in terms of the cubic interaction phase function based on the dispersion relations of the underlying linear periodic medium. It turns out that only a few quadruplets of modes have significant nonlinear interactions. They are singled out by a system of selection rules including the group velocity, frequency and phase matching conditions. It turns out that the intrinsic symmetries of the cubic interaction phase stemming from assumed inversion symmetry of the dispersion relations play a significant role in the cubic nonlinear interactions. We also study canonical forms of the cubic interaction phase leading to a complete quantitative classification of all possible significant cubic interactions. The classification is ultimately based on a universal system of indices reflecting the intensity of nonlinear interactions.