Soliton pulse propagation in the presence of disorder-induced multiple scattering in photonic crystal waveguides

TL;DR

This paper develops a new coupled mode theory to model how disorder-induced multiple scattering affects soliton pulse propagation in photonic crystal waveguides, providing insights into disorder's inhibitory effects on nonlinear propagation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled mode framework including disorder effects and defines a multiple-scattering length scale, advancing understanding of nonlinear pulse dynamics in disordered photonic structures.

Findings

Numerical simulations align well with recent experimental results.

Disorder inhibits soliton propagation and nonlinear effects.

A new length scale quantifies the impact of disorder on cavity modes.

Abstract

We introduce a new coupled mode theory to model nonlinear Schr\"odinger equations for contra- propagating Bloch modes that include disorder-induced multiple scattering effects on nonlinear soliton propagation in photonic crystal waveguides. We also derive sub unit-cell coupling coefficients and use these to introduce a generalized length scale associated with each coupling effect. In particular, we define a multiple-scattering length scale that quantifies the spatial extent of a disorder- induced cavity mode. Our numerical simulations of nonlinear pulse propagation are in excellent qualitative agreement with recent experiments and provide insight into how disorder inhibits soliton propagation and other nonlinear propagation effects in photonic crystal waveguides.