Polarization waves in nonlinear fiber optics

Year: 2011

Authors: Kozlov V.V., Wabnitz S.

Autors Affiliation: Department of Information Engineering, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italy; Department of Physics, St.-Petersburg State University, Petrodvoretz, St.-Petersburg, 198504, Russian Federation

Abstract: The subject of this contribution is the study of the nonlinear interaction of two quasi-monochromatic beams in a Kerr medium (e.g., an optical fiber) in the counter-propagating 1-D geometry. As shown by Zakharov and Mikhailov in Ref. [1], this problem is exactly integrable if the medium has infinite extension. However, very little is known when the medium is bounded from both sides, and boundary conditions are set at both boundaries. We study this case numerically and demonstrate that the soliton, which is stable in the infinite medium, becomes unstable when the medium is finite. We show that instead of the soliton, a so-called polarization attractor is a stable solution of the governing equations with an extremely broad basin of attraction. Moreover, we apply our findings to the practical problem of the design of nonlinear polarizers for high-speed telecom applications.

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KeyWords: attractors; instability; polarization domain wall solitons
DOI: 10.1063/1.3636826