Pascal Kockaert

Three-dimensional structures in nonlinear cavities containing left-handed materials.

We study the coupling between negative diffraction and direct dispersion in a nonlinear ring cavity containing slabs of Kerr nonlinear right-handed and left-handed materials. Within the mean field approximation, we show that a portion of the homogeneous response curve is affected by a three-dimensional modulational instability. We show numerically that the light distribution evolves through a sequence of three-dimensional dissipative structures with different lattice symmetry. These structures are unstable with respect to the upswitching process, leading to a premature transition to the upper branch in the homogeneous hysteresis cycle.

Impact of nonlocal interactions in dissipative systems: Towards minimal-sized localized structures

In order to investigate the size limit of spatial localized structures in a nonlinear system, we explore the impact of linear nonlocality on their domains of existence and stability. Our system of choice is an optical microresonator containing an additional metamaterial layer in the cavity, allowing the nonlocal response of the material to become the dominating spatial process. In that case, our bifurcation analysis shows that this nonlocality imposes another limit on the width of localized structures going beyond the traditional diffraction limit.

Dissipative structures in left-handed material cavity optics.

We study the spatiotemporal dynamics of spatially extended nonlinear cavities containing a left-handed material. Such materials, which have a negative index of refraction, have been experimentally demonstrated recently, and allow for novel electromagnetic behavior. We show that the insertion of a left-handed material in an optical resonator allows for controlling the value and the sign of the diffraction coefficient in dispersive Kerr resonators and degenerate optical parametric oscillators. We give an overview of our analytical and numerical studies on the stability and formation of dissipative structures in systems with negative diffraction.

Beyond the zero-diffraction regime in optical cavities with a left-handed material

The combination of right-handed and left-handed materials offers the possibility to design devices in which the mean diffraction is zero. Such systems are encountered, for example, in nonlinear optical cavities, where a true zero-diffraction regime could lead to the formation of patterns with arbitrarily small sizes. In practice, the minimal size is limited by nonlocal terms in the equation of propagation. We study the nonlocal properties of light propagation in a nonlinear optical cavity containing a right-handed and a left-handed material. We obtain a model for the propagation, including two sources of nonlocality: the spatial dispersion of the materials in the cavity, and the higher-order terms of the mean field approximation. We apply these results to a particular case and derive an expression for the parameter fixing the minimal size of the patterns.

Pattern formation without diffraction matching in optical parametric oscillators with a metamaterial

We consider a degenerate optical parametric oscillator containing a left-handed material. We show that the inclusion of a left-handed material layer allows for controlling the strength and sign of the diffraction coefficient at either the pump or the signal frequency. Subsequently, we demonstrate the existence of stable dissipative structures without diffraction matching, i.e., without the usual relationship between the diffraction coefficients of the signal and pump fields. Finally, we investigate the size scaling of these light structures with decreasing diffraction strength.

Dynamics of Degenerate Optical Parametric Oscillators with Left-Handed Materials

In this contribution, we want to investigate the influence of left-handed materials on the spatiotemporal dynamics of degenerate optical parametric oscillators, which use a quadratic crystal to convert the energy of a pump laser to a signal field at half the pump frequency. It is well known that the coupling between diffraction and nonlinearity in such devices can induce a modulational instability in the homogeneous output beam, leading to the formation of dissipative structures. However, the inclusion of a left-handed material dramatically changes this dynamical behaviour.