Gap solitons with null-scattering

We study excitation of gap solitons under the conditions of coherent perfect absorption (CPA). Our system consists of a symmetric periodic structure with alternating Kerr nonlinear and linear layers, illuminated from both the ends. We show near-total transfer of incident light energy into the gap solitons resulting in null-scattering. We also report on the nonlinear super-scattering (SS) states. Both the CPA and the SS states are shown to be characterized by typical field distributions. Both the exact and the approximate results (based on nonlinear characteristic matrix method) are presented, which show good agreement

Cavity controlled spectral singularity

We study theoretically a PT-symmetric saturable balanced gain-loss system in a ring cavity configuration. The saturable gain and loss are modeled by two-level medium with or without population inversion. We show that the specifics of the spectral singularity can be fully controlled by the cavity and the atomic detuning parameters. The theory is based on the mean-field approximation as in standard theory of optical bistability. Further, in the linear regime we demonstrate the regularization of the singularity in detuned systems, while larger input power levels are shown to be adequate to limit the infinite growth in absence of detunin

Nonlinearity Induced Critical Coupling

We study a critically coupled system (Opt. Lett., \textbf{32}, 1483 (2007)) with a Kerr-nonlinear spacer layer. Nonlinearity is shown to inhibit null-scattering in a critically coupled system at low powers. However, a system detuned from critical coupling can exhibit near-complete suppression of scattering by means of nonlinearity-induced changes in refractive index. Our studies reveal clearly an important aspect of critical coupling as a delicate balance in both the amplitude and the phase relations, while a nonlinear resonance in dispersive bistability concerns only the phase

Optimization of second-harmonic generation from touching plasmonic wires

We employ transformation optics to optimize the generic nonlinear wave interaction of second-harmonic generation from a pair of touching metallic wires. We demonstrate a 10 orders of magnitude increase in the second-harmonic scattering cross-section by increasing the background permittivity and a 5 orders of magnitude increase in efficiency with respect to a single wire. These results have clear implications for the design of nanostructured metallic frequency-conversion devices. Finally, we exploit our analytic solution of a non-trivial nanophotonic geometry as a platform for performing a critical comparison of the strengths, weaknesses and validity of other prevailing theoretical approaches previously employed for nonlinear wave interactions at the nanoscale