Enhanced nonlinear interactions in optical slow wave structures and the limiting role of disorder

摘要

We describe the waveguiding principles of optical slow-wave structures that lead to the tight-binding form of the dispersion relation. In the presence of the optical Kerr effect, we show that soliton-like non-propagating envelopes ("frozen light") can be expected, but the presence of disorder e.g., in the coupling coefficients between neighboring unit cells, creates a band-tail at the edges of the dispersion relation and causes non-zero propagation velocity of such pulses.