Quasi-solitons and stable superluminal opto-acoustic pulses in Brillouin scattering

TL;DR

This paper explores the theoretical and numerical behavior of soliton-like waves in stimulated Brillouin scattering, revealing novel superluminal pulses and their dependence on damping and input fields.

Contribution

It introduces and characterizes new classes of resonant and anti-symmetric soliton-like waves, including superluminal pulses, in Brillouin scattering.

Findings

Resonant solitary waves depend on optical and acoustic damping ratios.

Anti-symmetric soliton-like waves can be superluminal and tunable.

Conditions for excitation and observation of these waves are discussed.

Abstract

We theoretically and numerically study the evolution of soliton-like waves supported by stimulated Brillouin scattering. First, the emergence and unusual behaviour of resonant solitary waves are investigated for both backward and forward three wave interactions. We find that these waves can be characterized by the ratio between the optical and acoustic damping coefficients. We also examine a second class of non-resonant anti-symmetric soliton-like waves, which have a more complicated pulse shape than traditional solitons. These waves are superluminal, with pulse velocities that can be tuned by the input Stokes and pump fields. We discuss the excitation of these types of waves and the physical conditions required for their observation.