Observation of double-charge discrete vortex solitons in hexagonal photonic lattices

Date

2009

Authors

Terhalle, Bernd
Richter, T
Law, Kods JH
Gories, D
Rose, P
Alexander, Tristram J
Kevrekidis, P G
Desyatnikov, Anton S
Kaiser, Friedemann
Denz, Cornelia

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

American Physical Society

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of stable double-charge discrete vortex solitons generated in hexagonal photonic lattices created optically in self-focusing nonlinear media and show that single-charge vortex solitons are unstable in analogous conditions. Subsequently, we study, both theoretically and experimentally, the existence and stability of spatial vortex solitons in two-dimensional hexagonal photonic lattices. We demonstrate that the stability of the double-charge vortices is a consequence of the intersite power exchange in the vortex soliton, and we provide a simple stability criterion on the basis of the analysis of the corresponding discrete nonlinear model. We extend our analysis to the case of defocusing nonlinearity and show the inversion of the vortex stability properties resulting in the fact that single-charge vortices become stable while their double-charge counterparts are unstable.

Description

Keywords

Keywords: Defocusing; Discrete nonlinear model; Discrete vortices; Existence and stability; Experimental observation; Non-linear media; Non-Linearity; Photonic lattice; Power exchange; Self-focusing; Stability properties; Vortex solitons; Nonlinear optics; Photonic

Citation

Source

Physical Review A: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

License Rights

Restricted until

2037-12-31