Period-doubled Floquet solitons
Abstract
Floquet solitons are shape-preserving nonlinear wave packets exhibiting periodic micromotion during propagation. Here we propose and experimentally demonstrate a family of period-doubled Floquet solitons in the bulk of a photonic topological insulator. Unlike the traditional Floquet states, the wave function of a period-doubled soliton repeats itself after two periods, apart from an overall phase factor associated with the Floquet quasienergy. Our experimental system consists of periodically modulated honeycomb lattices of optical waveguides fabricated by femtosecond laser writing. We employ a Kerr nonlinearity in which self-focusing gives rise to spatial lattice solitons. Our photonic system constitutes a powerful platform for probing the interplay of time-periodic driving, topology, and nonlinearity in a highly tunable way.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Oct 02, 2023
- Source ID
- 10.1364/optica.494823
Entities
People
- Mikael C Rechtsman
- Sebabrata Mukherjee
Organizations
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru
- Indian Space Research Organisation
- Office of Naval Research
- Pennsylvania State University