Nonlinear Physics Seminar: "Controlling soliton dynamics in broadband nonlinear optical waveguide systems"

Date: 
Wed, 14/12/201612:00-13:30
Location: 
Danciger B building, Seminar room
Lecturer: Prof. Avner Peleg
Affiliation: Afeka College of Engineering
Abstract:
Transmission rates in broadband optical
waveguide systems are significantly
enhanced by launching many pulse
sequences through the same waveguide.
Since pulses from different sequences
propagate with different group velocities,
intersequence pulse collisions are very
frequent, and can lead to severe
transmission degradation. On the other
hand, the energy exchange in pulse
collisions can be beneficially used for
realizing fast control of the transmission.
In the current work we develop a general
approach for exploiting the energy
exchange in intersequence collisions for
transmission stabilization and switching,
using solitons as the optical pulses. Along
the way we also develop several methods
for solving one of the most challenging
problems in nonlinear waveguide optics -
the problem of stabilizing broadband
soliton transmission against resonant
emission of small-amplitude waves. Our
approach for transmission control is based
on showing that collision-induced
amplitude dynamics in N-sequence
waveguide systems can be described by N-
dimensional Lotka-Volterra (LV) models,
where the model's form depends on the
dissipative processes in the waveguide.
Stability and bifurcation analysis for the
equilibrium states of the LV models is used
to develop ways for achieving robust
transmission stabilization and switching
that work well for a variety of waveguides
including optical fibers and silicon
waveguides. Furthermore, we show that
supercritical Hopf bifurcations of the
equilibrium states of the LV models can be
used to induce large stable oscillations of
soliton amplitudes along ultra-long
propagation distances. The latter finding is
an important step towards realizing spatio-
temporal chaos with multiple sequences of
colliding solitons in nonlinear optical
waveguides.