Abstract

Over the past four years there have been a number of theoretical studies of gap solitons and related phenomena. Gap solitons are excitations that can appear in nonlinear periodic optical structures, such as a multilayer film or a corrugated waveguide. Such structures have photonic band gaps, ranges of frequencies at which light cannot propagate through the structure in the linear limit. In the presence of nonlinearity, however, the material can be locally "tuned out of the gap" if intensities are high enough, and self-localize excitations can form. First observed in numerical studies, these excitations can, in certain limits, exhibit the robustness of solitons. They can lead to optical bistability, multistability, and chaos in the optical response of nonlinear periodic structures, as well as to the ultraslow propagation of light.

© 1991 Optical Society of America