title: Continuous Solitons in a Lattice Nonlinearity.
abstract: We study theoretically and experimentally the propagation of optical solitons in a lattice nonlinearity, a periodic pattern that both affects and is strongly affected by the wave. Observations are carried out using spatial photorefractive solitons in a volume microstructured crystal with a built-in oscillating low-frequency dielectric constant. The pattern causes an oscillating electro-optic response that induces a periodic optical nonlinearity. On-axis results in potassium-lithium-tantalate-niobate indicate the appearance of effective continuous saturated-Kerr solitons, where all spatial traces of the lattice vanish, independently of the ratio between beam width and lattice constant. Decoupling the lattice nonlinearity allows the detection of discrete delocalized and localized light distributions, demonstrating that the continuous solitons form out of the combined compensation of diffraction and of the underlying periodic volume pattern.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pierangeli
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Flammini
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.|Center for Life Nano Science@Sapienza, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, 00161 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Mei
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.|IPCF-CNR, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Parravicini
authors.affiliation: The Brojde Center for Innovative Engineering and Computer Science, The Hebrew University, Jeruslaem 91904, Israel.
authors.forename: C E M
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: de Oliveira
authors.affiliation: The Brojde Center for Innovative Engineering and Computer Science, The Hebrew University, Jeruslaem 91904, Israel.
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Agranat
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.|IPCF-CNR, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: DelRe