Rotonlike instability and pattern formation in spinor Bose-Einstein condensates

We show that metastable phases of an antiferromagnetic spin-1 condensate in a simple model with pure contact interactions can exhibit a rotonlike minimum in the excitation spectrum. The introduction of magnetic field gives rise to the instability of roton modes, which can lead to spontaneous emergence of regular periodic, polygonal, polyhedral or crystalline patterns, as shown in numerical simulations within the truncated Wigner approximation. An explanation of the occurrence of rotonlike instability is given based on the energy and spin conservation laws

Stability and spatial coherence of nonresonantly pumped exciton-polariton condensates

We investigate the stability and coherence properties of one-dimensional exciton-polariton condensates under nonresonant pumping. We model the condensate dynamics using the open-dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation. In the case of spatially homogeneous pumping, we find that the instability of the steady state leads to significant eduction of the coherence length. We consider two effects that can lead to the stabilization of the steady state, i.e. the polariton energy relaxation and the influence of an inhomogeneous pumping profile. We find that, while the former has little effect on the stability, the latter is very effective in stabilizing the condensate which results in a large coherence length.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Spatial solitons and light-induced instabilities in colloidal media

We study nonlinear light propagation in colloidal nanosuspensions. We introduce a novel model for the nonlinear response of colloids which describes consistently the system in the regimes of low and high light intensities and low/large concentrations of colloidal particles. We employ this model to study the light-induced instabilities and demonstrate the formation of stable spatial solitons as well as the existence of a bistability regime

Soliton interactions and transformations in colloidal media

We study nonlinear light propagation in colloidal suspensions of spherical dielectric nanoparticles. We analyze the existence and properties of one-dimensional self-trapped beams (spatial optical solitons) in such media and demonstrate the existence of

Competition between attractive and repulsive interactions in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in an optical lattice

We consider effects of inter-species attraction on two-component gap solitons (GSs) in the binary BEC with intra-species repulsion, trapped in the one-dimensional optical lattice (OL). Systematic simulations of the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations (GPEs) corroborate an assumption that, because the effective mass of GSs is negative, the inter-species attraction may \emph{split} the two-component soliton. Two critical values, $\kappa_{1}$ and $\kappa_{2}$, of the OL strength ($\kappa$) are identified. Two-species GSs with fully overlapping wave functions are stable in strong lattices ($\kappa >\kappa_{1}$). In an intermediate region, $\kappa_{1}>\kappa >\kappa_{2}$, the soliton splits into a double-humped state with separated components. Finally, in weak lattices ($\kappa <\kappa_{2}$%), the splitting generates a pair of freely moving single-species GSs. We present and explain the dependence of $\kappa_{1}$ and $\kappa_{2}$ on thenumber of atoms (total norm), and on the relative strength of the competing inter-species attraction and intra-species repulsion. The splitting of asymmetric solitons, with unequal norms of the two species, is briefly considered too. It is found and explained that the splitting threshold grows with the increase of the asymmetry

Light Bullets in Nonlinear Periodically Curved Waveguide Arrays

We predict that stable mobile spatio-temporal solitons can exist in arrays of periodically curved optical waveguides. We find two-dimensional light bullets in one-dimensional arrays with harmonic waveguide bending and three-dimensional bullets in square lattices with helical waveguide bending using variational formalism. Stability of the light bullet solutions is confirmed by the direct numerical simulations which show that the light bullets can freely move across the curved arrays. This mobility property is a distinguishing characteristic compared to previously considered discrete light bullets which were trapped to a specific lattice site. These results suggest new possibilities for flexible spatio-temporal manipulation of optical pulses in photonic lattices.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Crossover from self-defocusing to discrete trapping in nonlinear waveguide arrays

We predict a sharp crossover from nonlinear self-defocusing to discrete self-trapping of a narrow Gaussian beam with the increase of the refractive index contrast in a periodic photonic lattice. We demonstrate experimentally nonlinear discrete localization of light with defocusing nonlinearity by single site excitation in LiNbO$_3$ waveguide arrays.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Analytical method for determining quantum well exciton properties in a magnetic field

We develop an analytical approximate method for determining the Bohr radii of Wannier-Mott excitons in thin quantum wells under the influence of magnetic field perpendicular to the quantum well plane. Our hybrid variational-perturbative method allows us to obtain simple closed formulas for exciton binding energies and optical transition rates. We confirm the reliability of our method through exciton-polariton experiments realized in a GaAs/AlAs microcavity with an 8 nm In-x Ga1-xAs quantum well and magnetic field strengths as high as 14 T