Soliton trains in photonic lattices

Abstract

We address the formation and propagation of multi-spot soliton packets in saturable Kerr nonlinear media with an imprinted harmonic transverse modulation of the refractive index. We show that, in sharp contrast to homogeneous media where stable multi-peaked solitons do not exist, the photonic lattices support stable higher-order structures in the form of soliton packets, or soliton trains. Intuitively, such trains can be viewed as made of several lowest order solitons bound together with appropriate relative phases and their existence as stable objects puts forward the concept of compact manipulation of several solitons as a single entity.