Intermittent Giant Goos-Hanchen shifts from Airy beams at nonlinear interfaces

Abstract

We study the giant Goos-Hanchen shift obtained from an Airy beam impinging on a nonlinear interface. To avoid any angular restriction associated with the paraxial approximation, the analysis is based on the numerical solution of the nonlinear Helmholtz equation. We report the existence of non-standard intermittent and oscillatory regimes for the nonlinear Goos-Hanchen shifts which can be explained in terms of the competition between the critical coupling to a surface mode of the reflected component of the Airy beam and the soliton emission from the refracted beam component.