Nonlinear Effects in Photonic Materials - Abstract

Krolikowski, Wieslaw

Light control in nonlinear photorefractive lattices.

There has been growing interest in propagation of optical beams and pulses in media with periodically varying refractive index. Such periodic structures or optical lattices lead to appearance of a band gaps in the transmission spectrum of waves. As a result, diffractional properties of optical beams can be drastically modified. Lattice-induced propagation effects become even more dramatic in the presence of the nonlinearity of the medium leading among others to the formation of discrete and gap solitons. In this talk I will present experimental and theoretical results of our studies of light localisation in optical lattices with photorefractive nonlinearity. These include formation of gap and surface solitons as well as polychromatic solitons.