Coupled Airy breathers

TL;DR

This paper explores the behavior of coupled Airy beams in linear and nonlinear regimes, revealing breather-like propagation and solitonic interactions, with implications for photonic and plasmonic systems.

Contribution

It provides the first complete analytic solution for coupled Airy beams and demonstrates their robustness and complex dynamics in nonlinear media.

Findings

Analytic solutions describe breather-like propagation in linear regime.

Nonlinear regime produces solitonic breathers due to Kerr effect.

Coupling dynamics are compatible with Airy-like behavior.

Abstract

The dynamics of two component coupled Airy beams is investigated. In the linear propagation regime a complete analytic solution describes breather like propagation of the two components featuring non-diffracting self-accelerating Airy behavior. The superposition of two beams with different input properties opens the possibility to design more complex non-diffracting propagation scenarios. In the strongly nonlinear regime the dynamics remains qualitatively robust as is revealed by direct numerical simulations. Due to the Kerr effect the two beams emit solitonic breathers, whose coupling period is compatible with the remaining Airy-like beams. The results of this study are relevant for the description of photonic and plasmonic beams propagating in coupled planar waveguides as well as for birefrigent or multi-wavelengths beams.