43 research outputs found

    Multifractals Competing with Solitons on Fibonacci Optical Lattice

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    We study the stationary states for the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation on the Fibonacci lattice which is expected to be realized by Bose-Einstein condensates loaded into an optical lattice. When the model does not have a nonlinear term, the wavefunctions and the spectrum are known to show fractal structures. Such wavefunctions are called critical. We present a phase diagram of the energy spectrum for varying the nonlinearity. It consists of three portions, a forbidden region, the spectrum of critical states, and the spectrum of stationary solitons. We show that the energy spectrum of critical states remains intact irrespective of the nonlinearity in the sea of a large number of stationary solitons.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, major revision, references adde

    Robust optical delay lines via topological protection

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    Phenomena associated with topological properties of physical systems are naturally robust against perturbations. This robustness is exemplified by quantized conductance and edge state transport in the quantum Hall and quantum spin Hall effects. Here we show how exploiting topological properties of optical systems can be used to implement robust photonic devices. We demonstrate how quantum spin Hall Hamiltonians can be created with linear optical elements using a network of coupled resonator optical waveguides (CROW) in two dimensions. We find that key features of quantum Hall systems, including the characteristic Hofstadter butterfly and robust edge state transport, can be obtained in such systems. As a specific application, we show that the topological protection can be used to dramatically improve the performance of optical delay lines and to overcome limitations related to disorder in photonic technologies.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures + 12 pages of supplementary informatio

    Toward a geography of black internationalism: Bayard Rustin, nonviolence and the promise of Africa

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    This article charts the trip made by civil rights leader Bayard Rustin to West Africa in 1952, and examines the unpublished ‘Africa Program’ which he subsequently presented to leading American pacifists. I situate Rustin’s writings within the burgeoning literature on black internationalism which, despite its clear geographical registers, geographers themselves have as yet made only a modest contribution towards. The article argues that within this literature there remains a tendency to romanticize cross-cultural connections in lieu of critically interrogating their basic, and often competing, claims. I argue that closer attention to the geographies of black internationalism, however, allows us to shape a more diverse and practiced sense of internationalist encounter and exchange. The article reconstructs the multiplicity of Rustin’s black internationalist geographies which drew eclectically from a range of Pan-African, American and pacifist traditions. Though each of these was profoundly racialized, they conceptualized race in distinctive ways and thereby had differing understandings of what constituted the international as a geographical arena. By blending these forms of internationalism Rustin was able to promote a particular model of civil rights which was characteristically internationalist in outlook, nonviolent in principle and institutional in composition; a model which in selective and uneven ways continues to shape our understanding of the period

    Ultra-low-power hybrid light-matter solitons.

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    New functionalities in nonlinear optics will require systems with giant optical nonlinearity as well as compatibility with photonic circuit fabrication techniques. Here we introduce a platform based on strong light-matter coupling between waveguide photons and quantum-well excitons. On a sub-millimetre length scale we generate picosecond bright temporal solitons at a pulse energy of only 0.5 pJ. From this we deduce a nonlinear refractive index three orders of magnitude larger than in any other ultrafast system. We study both temporal and spatio-temporal nonlinear effects and observe dark-bright spatio-temporal polariton solitons. Theoretical modelling of soliton formation in the strongly coupled system confirms the experimental observations. These results show the promise of our system as a high speed, low power, integrated platform for physics and devices based on strong interactions between photons

    Contextualising Apartheid at the End of Empire: Repression, ‘Development’ and the Bantustans

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    This article examines the global dynamics of late colonialism and how these informed South African apartheid. More specifically, it locates the programmes of mass relocation and bantustan ‘self-government’ that characterised apartheid after 1959 in relation to three key dimensions. Firstly, the article explores the global circulation of idioms of ‘development’ and trusteeship in the first half of the twentieth century and its significance in shaping segregationist policy; secondly, it situates bantustan ‘selfgovernment’ in relation to the history of decolonisation and the partitions and federations that emerged as late colonial solutions; and, thirdly, it locates the tightening of rural village planning in the bantustans after 1960 in relation to the elaboration of anti-colonial liberation struggles, repressive southern African settler politics and the Cold War. It argues that, far from developing policies that were at odds with the global ‘wind of change’, South African apartheid during the 1960s and 1970s reflected much that was characteristic about late colonial strategy

    Conical Diffraction And Gap Solitons In Honeycomb Photonic Lattices

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    We predict and present the first observation of conical diffraction arising from k-space singularities in the band-structure of a periodic potential. The experiments are carried out in honeycomb lattices, where we also generate honeycomb gap-solitons . © 2007 Optical Society of America

    Conical Diffraction And Gap Solitons In Honeycomb Photonic Lattices

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    We predict and present the first observation of conical diffraction arising from k-space singularities in the band-structure of a periodic potential. The experiments are carried out in honeycomb lattices, where we also generate honeycomb gap-solitons . © 2007 Optical Society of America

    Lattice Surface Solitons

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    It is theoretically shown that nonlinear surface-waves are possible in optical lattices. Such solitons can exist at the interface between two different semi-infinite 1D waveguide arrays and also at the boundaries of a 2D lattice. © 2006 Optical Society of America
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