Linear Schr\"odinger equation with temporal evolution for front induced transitions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a linear Schr"odinger equation with temporal evolution to model front induced transitions in optical systems, especially near band edges where traditional spatial evolution approaches fail, enabling better analysis of pulse dynamics and reflections.

Contribution

It proposes a novel linear Schr"odinger equation formulation with temporal evolution for describing pulse propagation in complex optical systems, including those with zero group velocity.

Findings

Temporal evolution approach handles zero group velocity scenarios.

Simulation of intraband indirect photonic transitions demonstrates applicability.

Method captures pulse reflection from static and counter-propagating fronts.

Abstract

The nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation based on slowly varying approximation is usually applied to describe the pulse propagation in nonlinear waveguides. However, for the case of the front induced transitions (FITs), the pump effect is well described by the dielectric constant perturbation in space and time. Thus, a linear Schr\"odinger equation can be used. Also, in waveguides with weak dispersion the spatial evolution of the pulse temporal profile is usually tracked. Such a formulation becomes impossible for optical systems for which the group index or higher dispersion terms diverge as is the case near the band edge of photonic crystals. For the description of FITs in such systems a linear Schr\"odinger equation can be used where temporal evolution of the pulse spatial profile is tracked instead of tracking the spatial evolution. This representation provides the same descriptive power and can easily deal with zero group velocities. Furthermore, the Schr\"odinger equation with temporal evolution can describe signal pulse reflection from both static and counter-propagating fronts, in contrast to the Schr\"odinger equation with spatial evolution which is bound to forward propagation. Here, we discuss the two approaches and demonstrate the applicability of the spatial evolution for the system close to the band edge where the group velocity vanishes by simulating intraband indirect photonic transitions.