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Solitons

Self-trapping of speckled light beams

Nature Photonics volume 2, pages 334–335 (2008)Cite this article

A speckle beam of light breaks up into small fragments as it propagates in a standard self-focusing nonlinear material. Now, by exploiting the non-local thermal response of a material, it is possible to trap a speckle beam in a self-induced waveguide.

A collimated coherent beam of light diffracts and spreads out as it propagates. In a nonlinear medium, however, the index of refraction may increase with the intensity of the beam, which leads to the phenomenon of self-trapping: as the index of refraction is greater at the centre of the beam than at its wings, the beam creates an effective waveguide lens for itself. The beam then propagates without spreading in this self-formed waveguide. This so-called spatial optical soliton results from a balance of two opposing tendencies, the tendency of the beam to expand due to diffraction, and the tendency for the beam to contract due to the self-focusing nonlinear effect.

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Figure 1: Self-trapping of a speckle beam in a non-local nonlinear material.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antonio Picozzi is at the Institut Carnot de Bourgogne, UMR 5209 CNRS, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France. Antonio.Picozzi@u-bourgogne.fr,

    Antonio Picozzi

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  1. Antonio Picozzi
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Picozzi, A. Self-trapping of speckled light beams. Nature Photon 2, 334–335 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.89

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2008.89

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