Geometrical nonlinearities in Photonic Nanowires
By: Fabio Biancalana
From: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany
At: Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar, Anfiteatro
[2010-09-15]
I derive a set of new unidirectional evolution equations for photonic nanowires, i.e. waveguides with sub-wavelength core diameter. Contrary to previous approaches, our formulation simultaneously takes into account both the vector nature of the electromagnetic field and the full variations of the effective modal profiles with wavelength. This leads to the discovery of new, previously unexplored nonlinear effects which have the potential to affect soliton propagation considerably. In particular, I demonstrate that a subwavelength-core dielectric photonic nanowire embedded in a properly designed photonic crystal fiber cladding shows evidence of a new kind of 'geometrical' nonlinearity (the magnitude of which is strongly dependent on the waveguide parameters) which acts on solitons so as to considerably reduce their Raman self-frequency shift. An explanation of the phenomenon in terms of indirect pulse negative chirping and broadening is given by using the moment method. Our conclusions are supported by detailed numerical simulations.