Self-trapping of polychromatic light in nonlinear photonic lattices

Abstract

We study dynamical reshaping of polychromatic beams due to collective nonlinear self-action of multiple-frequency components in periodic photonic lattices and predict the formation of polychromatic discrete solitons facilitated by localization of light in spectral gaps. We show that the self-trapping efficiency and structure of emerging polychromatic gap solitons depends on the spectrum of input beams due to the lattice-enhanced dispersion, including the effect of crossover from localization to diffraction in media with defocusing nonlinearity.