Abstract

Advances in the generation of light with supercontinuum spectra in photonic-crystal fibers (PCFs) open new possibilities for a wide range of applications. PCFs allow for engineering of the spectral dispersion and confinement of light through the underlying periodicity of their structure. Periodic photonic structures also find applications for spatial beam control, however their use is primarily optimized for beam shaping and deflection in a narrow-frequency range. In this work, we predict theoretically and demonstrate experimentally novel possibilities for active control of supercontinuum light beams in nonlinear waveguide arrays. Whereas different colors are separated in the linear regime due to the strong spectral dispersion, we show that nonlinear interactions enable collective manipulation of amplitude and phase states of all spectral components through the formation of supercontinuum spatial gap solitons.

© 2007 IEEE