A Photonic Tautochrone

TL;DR

This paper introduces an optical analogue of the tautochrone, enabling focusing of ultrashort pulses to enhance nonlinear effects, with applications in optical limiting, bistability, and quantum antibunching.

Contribution

It presents a novel photonic system mimicking the tautochrone property, achieving significant nonlinear enhancement and quantum effects in optical systems.

Findings

Orders of magnitude increase in phase shifts due to nonlinear effects

Implementation of optical limiters and multistability for light pulses

Prediction of a quantum blockade regime with antibunching

Abstract

We propose to implement an optical analogue of the tautochrone property of the cycloid to allow the focusing of ultrashort pulses inside photonic systems. This allows to enhance nonlinear effects, resulting in orders of magnitude increase of nonlinearity-induced phase shifts, while employing low irradiances. Building upon the optical-mechanical analogy, we show how to produce optical limiters for temporal light pulses, and how to implement temporal bistability and even multistability with large numbers of states. Finally, we move this concept to the quantum realm and predict a tautochrone quantum blockade regime with a stronger antibunching.