Modulational Instability in a Layered Kerr Medium: Theory and Experiment

Authors

Martin Centurion, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Mason A. Porter, California Institute of Technology
Ye Pu, California Institute of TechnologyFollow
P. G. Kevrekidis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
D. J. Frantzeskakis, University of Athens (Greece)
Demetri Psaltis, California Institute of Technology

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

12-2006

Comments

Published in PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 97, 234101 (2006); doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.234101. Copyright 2006 The American Physical Society. Used by permission.

Abstract

We present the first experimental investigation of modulational instability in a layered Kerr medium. The particularly interesting and appealing feature of our configuration, consisting of alternating glass-air layers, is the piecewise-constant nature of the material properties, which allows a theoretical linear stability analysis leading to a Kronig-Penney equation whose forbidden bands correspond to the modulationally unstable regimes. We find very good quantitative agreement between theoretical, numerical, and experimental diagnostics of the modulational instability. Because of the periodicity in the evolution variable arising from the layered medium, there are multiple instability regions rather than just one as in a uniform medium.