Optical pulse propagation in a switched-on photonic lattice: Rabi effect with the roles of light and matter interchanged

TL;DR

This paper explores a temporal analog of the Rabi effect in a photonic lattice, demonstrating how light pulses exhibit Rabi oscillations when propagating through a suddenly switched-on lattice, confirmed by numerical solutions of Maxwell's equations.

Contribution

It introduces a simple theoretical model for Rabi oscillations in photonic lattices and confirms it through numerical simulations, highlighting a novel temporal analog of the Rabi effect.

Findings

Observation of Rabi oscillations in light pulses within photonic lattices

Confirmation of the theory through Maxwell equation simulations

Identification of high-frequency modulation due to energy transfer between fields

Abstract

A light pulse propagating in a suddenly switched on photonic lattice, when the central frequency lies in the photonic band gap, is an analog of the Rabi model where the two-level system is the two resonant (i.e. Bragg-coupled) Fourier modes of the pulse, while the photonic lattice serves as a monochromatic external field. A simple theory of these Rabi oscillations is given and confirmed by the numerical solution of the corresponding Maxwell equations. This is a direct, i.e. temporal, analog of the Rabi effect, additionally to the spatial analog in optical beam propagation described in Opt. Lett. 32, 1920 (2007). An additional high-frequency modulation of the Rabi oscillations reflects the lattice-induced energy transfer between the electric and magnetic fields of the pulse.