Subwavelength vortical plasmonic lattice solitons

Soliton-like surface plasmon polaritons generated on the surface of a silver nanowire embedded in a Kerr nonlinear medium

The behavior of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) generated on the surface of a silver nanowire by coaxial Gaussian beams in Kerr nonlinear mediums is studied numerically. Enhancement of the propagation of the SPPs is realized due to the introduction of the nonlinear effect. Further adjusting the nonlinearity or the beam's intensity results in a soliton-like propagation of SPPs. This can be explained by the nonlinear self-focusing effect transferring more light into SPP modes and counteracting the attenuation caused by the absorption of metal. This result may contribute to SPP-based applications where an enhanced propagation length is needed.

A Review on the Development of Tunable Graphene Nanoantennas for Terahertz Optoelectronic and Plasmonic Applications

Exceptional advancement has been made in the development of graphene optical nanoantennas. They are incorporated with optoelectronic devices for plasmonics application and have been an active research area across the globe. The interest in graphene plasmonic devices is driven by the different applications they have empowered, such as ultrafast nanodevices, photodetection, energy harvesting, biosensing, biomedical imaging and high-speed terahertz communications. In this article, the aim is to provide a detailed review of the essential explanation behind graphene nanoantennas experimental proofs for the developments of graphene-based plasmonics antennas, achieving enhanced light-matter interaction by exploiting graphene material conductivity and optical properties. First, the fundamental graphene nanoantennas and their tunable resonant behavior over THz frequencies are summarized. Furthermore, incorporating graphene-metal hybrid antennas with optoelectronic devices can prompt the acknowledgment of multi-platforms for photonics. More interestingly, various technical methods are critically studied for frequency tuning and active modulation of optical characteristics, through in situ modulations by applying an external electric field. Second, the various methods for radiation beam scanning and beam reconfigurability are discussed through reflectarray and leaky-wave graphene antennas. In particular, numerous graphene antenna photodetectors and graphene rectennas for energy harvesting are studied by giving a critical evaluation of antenna performances, enhanced photodetection, energy conversion efficiency and the significant problems that remain to be addressed. Finally, the potential developments in the synthesis of graphene material and technological methods involved in the fabrication of graphene-metal nanoantennas are discussed.

Dynamics of Gaussian beam modeled by fractional Schrödinger equation with a variable coefficient

In the paper, we investigate the propagation dynamics of the Gaussian beam modeled by the fractional Schrödinger equation (FSE) with a variable coefficient. In the absence of the beam's chirp, for smaller Lévy index, the Gaussian beam firstly splits into two beams, however under the action of the longitudinal periodic modulation, they exhibit a periodically oscillating behaviour. And with the increasing of the Lévy index, the splitting behaviour gradually diminishes. Until the Lévy index equals to 2, the splitting behaviour is completely replaced by a periodic diffraction behaviour. In the presence of the beam's chirp, one of the splitting beams is gradually suppressed with the increasing of the chirp, while another beam on the opposite direction becomes stronger and exhibits a periodically oscillating behaviour. Also, the oscillating amplitude and period are investigated and the results show that the former is dependent on the modulation frequency, the Lévy index and the beam's chirp, the latter depends only on the modulation frequency. Thus, the evolution of the Gaussian beam can be well manipulated to achieve the beam management in the framework of the FSE by controlling the system parameters and the chirp parameter.

Polaritonic solitons in a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a soft optical lattice

We investigate the ground state (GS) of a collisionless Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) trapped in a soft one-dimensional optical lattice (OL), which is formed by two counterpropagating optical beams perturbed by the BEC density profile through the local-field effect (LFE). We show that LFE gives rise to an envelope-deformation potential, a nonlocal potential resulting from the phase deformation, and an effective self-interaction of the condensate. As a result, stable photon-atomic (polaritonic) lattice solitons, including an optical component, in the form of the deformation of the soft OL, in a combination with a localized matter-wave component, are generated in the blue-detuned setting, without any direct interaction between atoms. These self-trapped modes, which realize the system's GS, are essentially different from the gap solitons supported by the interplay of the OL potential and collisional interactions between atoms. A transition to tightly bound modes from loosely bound ones occurs with the increase of the number of atoms in the BEC.

Multiband vector plasmonic lattice solitons

We predict multiband vector plasmonic lattice solitons (PLSs) in metal-dielectric waveguide arrays, in both focusing and defocusing nonlinearities. Such vector solitons consist of two components originating from different transmission bands. By simulating the full nonlinear Maxwell's equations, we demonstrate the diffractionless propagation of vector PLSs and their discrete diffraction when only one component is present. Their subwavelength size characteristics and the influences of metallic losses are also studied.

Surface plasmonic lattice solitons

We reveal the existence of the surface plasmonic lattice solitons (surface PLSs) at the boundary of a semi-infinite metallic-dielectric periodic nanostructure. We find that the truncation of the periodic structure imposes a threshold power for the existence of surface PLSs, and significantly enhances the modal localization. The propagation and excitation of surface PLSs as well as their potential application in the all-optical subwavelength switching are also demonstrated.

Ring-like solitons in plasmonic fiber waveguides composed of metal-dielectric multilayers

We design a plasmonic fiber waveguide (PFW) composed of coaxial cylindrical metal-dielectric multilayers in nanoscale, and constitute the corresponding dynamical equations describing the propagation modes in the PFW with the Kerr nonlinearity in the dielectric layers. The physics is connected to the discrete matrix nonlinear Schrödinger equations, from which the highly confined ring-like solitons in scale of subwavelength are found both for the visible lights and the near-infrared lights in the self-defocusing condition. Moreover, when increasing the intensity of the input light the confinement can be further improved due to the cylindrical symmetry of the PFW, which means both the width and the radius of the ring are reduced.