Light tunneling inhibition and anisotropic diffraction engineering in two-dimensional waveguide arrays

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how out-of-phase harmonic modulation in 2D waveguide arrays can suppress light tunneling, enabling anisotropic diffraction control, diffraction-free propagation, and tunneling inhibition for complex light structures.

Contribution

It introduces a method for controlling light propagation in 2D waveguide arrays through harmonic modulation, achieving anisotropic diffraction and tunneling inhibition for multi-channel vortices.

Findings

Suppression of light tunneling via harmonic modulation.

Engineering of anisotropic diffraction patterns.

Achievement of diffraction-free propagation along specific directions.

Abstract

We address two-dimensional waveguide arrays where light tunneling into neighboring waveguides may be effectively suppressed by out-of-phase harmonic modulation of the refractive index in neighboring waveguides at suitable frequencies. Genuine two-dimensional features, such as anisotropic diffraction engineering, diffraction-free propagation along selected directions in the transverse plane and tunneling inhibition for multi-channel vortices, are shown to occur.