Nonlinearity Management in Optics: Experiment, Theory, and Simulation

Authors

Martin Centurion, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Mason A. Porter, California Institute of Technology
P. G. Kevrekidis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Demetri Psaltis, California Institute of Technology

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

7-2006

Comments

Published in PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 97, 033903 (2006); doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.033903. Copyright © 2006 The American Physical Society. Used by permission.

Abstract

We conduct an experimental investigation of nonlinearity management in optics using femtosecond pulses and layered Kerr media consisting of glass and air. By examining the propagation properties over several diffraction lengths, we show that wave collapse can be prevented. We corroborate these experimental results with numerical simulations of the (2 + 1)-dimensional focusing cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with piecewise constant coefficients and a theoretical analysis of this setting using a moment method.