title: Nonlinear waves in subwavelength waveguide arrays: evanescent bands and the "phoenix soliton".
abstract: We formulate wave propagation in arrays of subwavelength waveguides with sharp index contrasts and demonstrate the collapse of bands into evanescent modes and lattice solitons with superluminal phase velocity. We find a self-reviving soliton ("phoenix soliton") comprised of coupled forward- and backward-propagating light, originating solely from evanescent bands. In the linear regime, all Bloch waves comprising this beam decay, whereas a proper nonlinearity assembles them into a propagating self-trapped beam. Finally, we simulate the dynamics of such a beam and observe breakup into temporal pulses, indicating a new kind of slow-light gap solitons, trapped in time and in one transverse dimension.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Or
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Peleg
authors.forename: Mordechai
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Segev
authors.forename: Guy
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bartal
authors.forename: Demetrios N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Christodoulides
authors.forename: Nimrod
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Moiseyev