Integration of grating couplers with a compact photonic crystal demultiplexer on an InP membrane.

We demonstrate the integration of a 30% efficient grating coupler with a compact photonic crystal wavelength demultiplexer (DeMUX). The DeMUX has seven output channels that are spaced 10 nm apart and is aimed at coarse WDM applications. The integrated devices are realized on a high-index-contrast InP membrane using a simple benzocyclobutene wafer bonding technique.

Fast self-pulsing through nonlinear incoherent feedback.

We consider a double-pass ring cavity with nonlinear incoherent optical feedback and analyze its response when it is driven by a continuous laser beam. This particular cavity is equivalent, in the temporal domain, to a simple spatial-pattern-generating system made from a Kerr slice and a feedback mirror. After formulating the evolution equations, we investigate the behavior of small-amplitude solutions and obtain an expression for the round-trip gains.

Experimental observation of the elliptically polarized fundamental vector soliton of isotropic Kerr media.

We report the experimental observation of the elliptically polarized fundamental vector soliton of isotropic Kerr media and its unique polarization evolution. This was achieved in the spatial domain in a nonbirefringent CS2 planar waveguide.

Simulations and experiments on self-focusing conditions in nematic liquid-crystal planar cells.

Owing to the nonlinear effect of optical field-induced director reorientation, self-focusing of an optical beam can occur in nematic liquid crystals and an almost diffraction-compensated propagation can be observed with milliwatts of light power and propagation lengths of several millimeters. This opens the way for applications in all-optical signal handling and reconfigurable optical interconnections. Self-focusing of an optical beam in nematic liquid-crystal cells has been studied experimentally and by means of numerical simulation.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of soliton arrays generated from spatial noise in a planar waveguide with relaxing Kerr nonlinearity.

Quasi-periodic arrays of bright soliton-like beams are obtained experimentally in the picosecond regime as a result of the transverse modulational instability of a noisy continuous background in a planar CS2 waveguide. For a given propagation length, the array is stable from a laser shot to another and for a wide range of input intensities. The experimental period corresponds to the maximum gain of modulational instability only for the intensity just sufficient for soliton formation.