Abstract

Periodic dielectrics exhibiting photonic bandgaps (PBGs) attract a lot of interest from both fundamental and applicative point of view. Onedimensional PBG structures, are best suited to fully understand the effect of nonlinearity. For example, bistability, self-pulsing, modulation instability, and gap-solitons¹ have been first predicted and observed in Bragg gratings with Kerrnonlinearity. Quadratic nonlinearities add new degrees of freedom, such as coupling of different Bragg orders (gaps) through the nonlinear response.² Even more importantly, the concept of stopband itself can be widened to include the case of a gap of nonlinear origin in an otherwise linearly transparent structure.³

© 2001 Optical Society of America