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Quantum decay of an optical soliton

Stuart Ward1,2, Rouzbeh Allahverdi1, and Arash Mafi2,3,*

  • 1Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106, USA
  • 2Center for High Technology Materials, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87106, USA
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045 USA

  • *arashmafi@ku.edu
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Phys. Rev. A 107, 053513 – Published 12 May, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.107.053513

Abstract

Optical solitons are known to be classically stable objects which are robust to perturbations. In this work we show that due to quantum-mechanical effects, an optical soliton that is initially in a classical soliton coherent state will shed photons into the continuum and hence decay. The standard formulation of the quantized soliton uses the linearized version of the quantum nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the background of the classical soliton, and the quantized soliton remains stable in this approximation. We show that if higher-order interaction terms are taken into account, the soliton is no longer stable, and its photon number decreases quadratically as a function of the number of soliton cycles. We compute the power spectrum for the continuum radiation and find a narrow band that is localized about the initial soliton momentum with a cutoff that is inversely proportional to the initial soliton width.

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Phys. Rev. A 107, 053513– Published 12 May, 2023
  • Received 8 February 2023
  • Accepted 27 April 2023
Article part of CHORUS
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