Dissipative Nonlinear Josephson Junction of Optical Soliton and Surface Plasmon

Abstract

We examine the dynamics of a dissipative photonic Josephson junction formed by the weak coupling of an optical soliton in a nonlinear dielectric waveguide and a co-propagating surface plasmon along a parallel metal surface with a linear dielectric spacer. We employ a heuristic model with a coupling function that depends on the soliton amplitude, and consider two phenomenological dissipation mechanisms separately: angular velocity dissipation and population imbalance dissipation. In the former dissipation mechanism, the system exhibits phase-slip phenomenon where the odd-\pi phase modes decay into even-\pi phase modes. The latter damping mechanism sculptures the phase-space significantly by introducing complex features, among which Hopf type bifurcations are notable. We show that some of the bifurcation points expand to stable limit cycles for certain regimes of the model parameters.