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Photonics and Nanostructures Fundamentals and Applications 8 (2010) 6266 www.elsevier.com/locate/photonics

Nonlinear surface waves in arrays of curved waveguides

Xinyuan Qi a,b,*, Ivan L. Garanovich a, Zhiyong Xu a, Andrey A. Sukhorukov a, Wieslaw Krolikowski a, Arnan Mitchell c, Guoquan Zhang b, Dragomir N. Neshev a, Yuri S. Kivshar a
a

Nonlinear Physics Centre and Laser Physics Centre, Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia b The Key Laboratory of Weak Light Nonlinear Photonics, Ministry of Education, Nankai University, Tianjin 300457, China c School of Electrical and CUDOS, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia Received 5 June 2009; accepted 14 August 2009 Available online 22 August 2009

Abstract We study both theoretically and experimentally the nonlinear surface waves at the edge of curved waveguide arrays with a surface defect. We show that the nonlinear coupling between different linear modes supported by the array can lead to beam switching to different output waveguides with increasing of the nonlinearity strength. Our experimental observations are in good agreement with the numerical modelling. Crown Copyright # 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Surface waves; Waveguide arrays; Nonlinear beam switching

1. Introduction The study of light beams localized at the interface separating different media, also called optical surface waves, attracts a lot of interest. In particular, such surface waves are very promising for applications in alloptical switching and sensing [1,2]. The physics of surface waves in periodic optical media is similar to the surface localization of electrons in solids, which is commonly explained as either Tamm or Shockley states [36]. In optics, it is known that such states can exist due to the presence of surface defects [7], in binary lattices [6,8], and as a result of nonlinearity-induced self* Corresponding author at: Nonlinear Physics Centre and Laser Physics Centre, Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), Research School of Physics and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. E-mail address: qixycn@gmail.com (X. Qi).

trapping of light at the edge of a semi-innite waveguide array [1,915]. The latter type of surface waves is associated with the formation of discrete surface solitons; however such discrete surface solitons could exist only above a certain power threshold of light beams [915]. Recently, it has been reported theoretically and experimentally that periodically curved waveguide arrays can support a novel type of linear surface modes without any surface defects [16,17]. The purpose of this work is to study the nonlinear propagation and localization of light waves due to the defocusing photorefractive nonlinearity [18] at the edge of a semi-innite periodically curved waveguide array with a surface defect. We demonstrate experimentally the signature of localized surface modes, and show that nonlinear beam self-action can provide effective beam shape control and switching between different surface states. We reveal a nontrivial beam dynamics due to interplay between three mechanisms

1569-4410/$ see front matter. Crown Copyright # 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.photonics.2009.08.003

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of beam localization: (i) waveguide bending, (ii) surface defects, and (iii) nonlinearity-induced selftrapping. 2. Theoretical analysis of linear surface modes We consider the propagation of light in a semiinnite one-dimensional array of coupled optical waveguides with a surface defect at the rst waveguide. Beam dynamics in this array can be described by a set of coupled equations for the normalized mode amplitudes at individual waveguides [16]: idan C expi 0 zan1 C expi 0 zan1 x x dz rn an gjan j2 an 0;

(1)

where an(z) is the eld amplitude in the nth waveguide, n = 1, 2. . ., and an 0  0 due to the structure termination (i.e. the waveguide with n = 1 corresponds to the surface of the semi-innite array). C is the coupling coefcient in the straight waveguide array with the same waveguide spacing [16] and the parameter g denes the strength of the nonlinear response. The waveguide axes are periodically curved with a period L in the propagation direction z. Schematic of the periodically curved waveguide arrays is shown in Fig. 1(a). The periodic waveguide bending is described by the array transverse shift function x0(z) = A{cos[4pz/L] 1} for 0 < z < L/2, x0(z) = x0(z L/2) for L/2 < z < L, and x0(z) = x0(z L) for z > L (see the sketch in Fig. 1(a)), where A is the waveguide bending amplitude. The value of r1 denes the strength of the surface defect, while we assume rn>1  0.

The longitudinal modulation of the photonic lattices is known to modify the diffraction properties of light beams propagating in the lattice [1922]. Specially, light propagation in our curved waveguide arrays can be described by an effective coupling coefcient between the neighbouring waveguides Ce = CJ0[jA/A0], where J0 is the Bessel function of the rst kind of order 0 and j % 2.40 is its rst root; A0 is the bending amplitude required for the regime of the diffraction cancellation, which is called dynamic localization, when Ce = 0 [20]. For our harmonic bending prole, we calculate that A0 = jlL/8p2n0d = 24.6 mm, where l = 532 nm is the vacuum wavelength of CW laser used in the experiments, n0 = 2.35 is the refractive index of LiNbO3 substrate, and d = 14 mm is the spacing between the centres of the adjacent waveguides. Our curved waveguide arrays with a surface defect can support different linear surface modes, whose propagation constants lie outside the array transmission band (see Fig. 1(b and c)), for a broad range of bending amplitudes. In particular, we identify two types of surface modes: (i) one defect mode due to the presence of the surface defect, similar to the Tamm states [6], which has intensity maximum at the rst waveguide (Fig. 1(b), curve 1, and Fig. 1(c), left), and (ii) other two modes existing due to the waveguide bending, similar to the defect-free surface states [16]. These two modes have intensity maxima in the second and third waveguides, respectively (Fig. 1(b), curves 2 and 3, and Fig. 1(c), middle and right). Next we consider the effect of nonlinearity on the beam propagation in our curved waveguide arrays. We solve numerically Eq. (1) using the beam propagation method. By matching the simulations with the measured discrete diffraction in the straight waveguide array, we nd the value of the coupling coefcient C = 0.09 mm1. We x the nonlinear coefcient to g = 1 (for defocusing photorefractive nonlinearity), and change the input intensity I to investigate the effect of nonlinearity on beam propagation, where I = jan(0)j2. At the input facet of our array we excite a single waveguide with number n (n = 1, 2). 3. Experimental setup

Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of the periodically curved waveguide array with a surface defect in the rst waveguide (gray line marked with waveguide number 1). (b) Propagation constants of linear surface modes vs. waveguide bending amplitude A with a surface defect r1 = 0.56. Gray shading marks the transmission band of the array. (c) Intensity proles of three different surface modes for the bending amplitude A = 24.5 mm, which correspond to points 1, 2, and 3 in (b). The numbers 1, 5 show the waveguide position.

In order to study experimentally the nonlinear surface waves in curved waveguide arrays, we fabricated arrays with different bending amplitudes A = 21.5, 24.5, and 27.5 mm in a 50 mm long X-cut LiNbO3 crystal with defocusing photorefractive nonlinearity. The fabrication process utilizes titanium indiffusion at 1010 8C for 15 h [18]. By tuning the

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Fig. 2. Schematic of the experimental setup. Laser beam (l = 532 nm) passes through a mirror, a half-wavelength plate, and a polarizing beam splitter to become an o-polarized with respect to the crystal orientation. The beam is then focused by lens L1 into the rst or second waveguides, respectively, of the arrays with different bending amplitudes. The inset shows the input excitation scheme.

Fig. 3. Experimental intensity distributions at the output facet of the sample for arrays with different bending amplitudes A (as marked). (a) The rst waveguide is excited at the input; (b) the second waveguide is excited at the input. For the linear propagation, marked with illumination time 0, the input power is 1 mW. For the rest of the images the input power is xed to 4 mW, while the illumination of the sample is changing as marked.

fabrication conditions, we obtain a transverse refractive index prole of our samples containing a negative surface defect in the rst waveguide, with a lower refractive index than the other waveguides (Fig. 1 (a)). Our experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2. In our experiment, an ordinary polarized laser beam with a wavelength l = 532 nm from a CW laser (Verdi V) is launched into the rst or second waveguides of our samples (Fig. 2). The choice of ordinary polarized beam ensures the low bending losses in light propagation. The output light intensity proles for different illumination times are imaged by the lens L2 onto the CCD camera (Fig. 2). Due to the slow response of the photorefractive nonlinearity in LiNbO3 (seconds or minutes), there appears a gradual increase of the nonlinear refractive

index change, despite the fact that the input power remains constant. At long illumination time, steady state beam propagation is achieved. 4. Results and discussion In Fig. 3 we show the experimental results of the linear and nonlinear propagation of the light beam in arrays with different bending amplitudes. Fig. 3 (left column) shows the output intensity distributions for different input powers and illumination times when the rst waveguide is excited. The experimental results for three different bending amplitudes are shown: 21.5 mm (top panel), 24.5 mm (middle panel), 27.5 mm (bottom panel). For the bending amplitude A = 24.5 mm which is

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very close to the dynamic localization point, three linear modes are present. For the other two bending amplitudes, which lie on both sides of the dynamic localization point, only one localized linear mode exists outside the band of extended Bloch modes (see Fig. 1(b)). For the bending amplitude A = 24.5 mm (middle panel of Fig. 3(a)) the three linear modes are easily excited in the experiment using a single site excitation technique. When the input beam is launched into the rst waveguide, the mode marked with 1 in Fig. 1(c) is excited at low powers (linear propagation regime, 1 mW, short illumination time) (Fig. 3(a), middle panel, top image). For input power of 4 mW, when we gradually increase the illumination time, the effect of defocusing nonlinearity increases the strength of the negative defect in the rst waveguide of the array, and eventually the beam becomes trapped in the rst waveguide. In the steady state, we observe the formation of a self-trapped nonlinear surface wave. When the input beam is launched into the second waveguide (middle row of Fig. 3(b)), the second surface mode marked 2 in Fig. 1(c) is excited at the low power (Fig. 3(b), middle panel, top). For an intermediate level of illumination of 4 mW, the nonlinear

coupling starts to occur between different linear modes of the array. We note that even away from the edges of curved waveguide arrays, the beam dynamics is highly nontrivial in this regime [2326]. We observe switching of light intensity between the rst, second and third waveguide as the illumination time (or nonlinearity) increases. With the input intensity increasing further, we observe that the beam becomes localized in the rst waveguide, indicating again the formation of a nonlinearity-induced surface state. For the bending amplitudes A = 21.5 and 27.5 mm, we are far away from the dynamical localization point (see Fig. 1(b)). Therefore, it is not possible to excite pure surface modes simply by using single-site input excitation. Thus at the array output we observe a complex intensity prole. This is due to the excitation of a few radiating modes from the transmission band (rst images in the top and bottom panels in Fig. 3). For the intermediate level of nonlinearity, we observe again beam reshaping and switching of beam intensity between different waveguides. This is due to the interplay between the nonlinear coupling and beating of different linear modes (see top and bottom panels in Fig. 3). However, similar to the array with bending amplitude A = 24.5 mm, the beam becomes localized to

Fig. 4. Numerical simulation on the propagations of the laser beam inside the sample when (ad) the rst and (ef) the second waveguide is excited at the input, respectively. I is the normalized input intensity marked at the corners. The numbers 1, 5, n are the waveguide numbers. Defect strength in the rst waveguide is taken to be r1 = 0.52 for bending amplitude A = 21.5 mm, and r1 = 0.56 for A = 24.5 mm and A = 27.5 mm.

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the surface for high enough input powers/illumination time. This is the case for both the rst and second waveguide excitation, where nonlinear surface waves are formed in the curved waveguide array. In order to understand deeper the formation of nonlinear surface waves in curved waveguide arrays, we performed extensive numerical modelling, using the discrete model described in Section 2. Our simulations shows a good qualitative agreement with the experimental results presented above. Fig. 4 summarizes the results of the numerical simulations for the three bending amplitudes (21.5 mm (top panel), 24.5 mm (middle panel), and 27.5 mm (bottom panel)). The numerical simulations also shed light on the beam dynamics inside the array, clearly demonstrating switching of power from one waveguide to another. 5. Conclusions

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We have studied theoretically and experimentally the existence and excitation of linear and nonlinear surface waves in curved waveguide arrays with different bending amplitude and a negative surface defect. In particular, we observed the formation of discrete surface solitons at high input laser powers. Our results show that the surface waves are strongly affected by the fabricated surface defect, as well as by the waveguide bending amplitudes, and strength of the nonlinearity. The nonlinear interaction between different linear modes of the array enables beam reshaping at the output of the array. Our results suggest new applications of this system for all-optical switching and surface probing. Acknowledgements This work has been supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC). X. Qi acknowledges the support from China Scholarship Council (CSC). References
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