Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Ofer Manela.
We study the effects caused by remote boundaries on soliton dynamics in nonlinear media with a large range of nonlocality, and demonstrate theoretically and experimentally how asymmetric boundary forces can lead to soliton steering and oscillation in predetermined trajectories.
We study theoretically nonlinear surface waves in optical lattices and show that solitons can exist at the heterointerface between two different semi-infinite 1D waveguide arrays, as well as at the boundaries of a 2D nonlinear lattice. The existence and properties of these surface soliton solutions are investigated in detail.
We present the first experimental study of spatial four-wave mixing in photonic lattices, demonstrating universal aspects of nonlinear processes in periodic media, such as engineered phase matching, Bloch-wave folding, and continuous control over the band at which the interaction products emerge.
We show that two Bloch modes launched into a nonlinear photonic lattice evolve into a comb or a supercontinuum of spatial frequencies, exhibiting a sensitive dependence on the difference between the quasi-momenta of the two initially excited modes. This phenomenon results from four-wave mixing combined with exchanges of momentum between the optical field and the lattice.
We report what is to our knowledge the first experimental observation of gap random-phase lattice solitons: self-trapped spatially incoherent entities whose modal constituents lie within a photonic bandgap.
We present an experimental study on wave propagation in highly nonlocal optically nonlinear media, for which far-away boundary conditions significantly affect the evolution of localized beams. As an example, we set the boundary conditions to be anisotropic and demonstrate the first experimental observation of coherent elliptic solitons. Furthermore, exploiting the natural ability of such nonlinearities to eliminate azimuthal instabilities, we perform the first observation of stable vortex-ring solitons. These features of highly nonlocal nonlinearities affected by far-away boundary conditions open new directions in nonlinear science by facilitating remote control over soliton propagation.
We identify nondiffracting beams in two-dimensional periodic systems, exhibiting symmetry properties and phase structure characteristic of the band(s) they are associated with.
We demonstrate second-band bright vortex-array solitons in photonic lattices. This constitutes the first experimental observation of higher-band solitons in any 2D periodic system. These solitons possess complex intensity and phase structures, yet they can be excited by a simple highly localized vortex-ring beam. Finally, we show that the linear diffraction of such beams exhibits preferential transport along the lattice axes.
We present a novel, real-time, experimental technique for linear and nonlinear Brillouin zone spectroscopy of photonic lattices. The method relies on excitation with random-phase waves and far-field visualization of the spatial spectrum of the light exiting the lattice. Our technique facilitates mapping the borders of the extended Brillouin zones and the areas of normal and anomalous dispersion within each zone. For photonic lattices with defects (e.g., photonic crystal fibers), our technique enables far-field visualization of the defect mode overlaid on the extended Brillouin zone structure of the lattice. The technique is general and can be used for photonic crystal fibers as well as for periodic structures in areas beyond optics.
We study self-localized second-band vortex states in two-dimensional photonic lattices and find stable ring solitons whose phase forms an array of counterrotating vortices. We also identify composite solitons in which a second-band vortex is jointly trapped with a mode arising from the first band and study their stability. When such a composite entity is unstable, it disintegrates while exchanging angular momentum between its constituents, eventually stabilizing into another form of composite soliton.
We present the experimental observation of both on-site and off-site vortex-ring solitons of unity topological charge in a nonlinear photonic lattice, along with a theoretical study of their propagation dynamics and stability.