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Optics Letters

Experimental observation of spectral Bloch oscillations

Christoph Bersch, G. Onishchukov, Ulf Peschel

Published Jul 29, 2009• 36 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report on the first, to our knowledge, experimental observation of spectral Bloch oscillations in an optical fiber employing the interaction between a probe signal and a traveling-wave periodic potential. The spectrum of weak probe pulses is shown to oscillate on account of their group-velocity mismatch to the periodic field. The behavior of a cw probe spectrum reveals the actual discrete nature of the effect. Recurrences of the spectrum after one and two Bloch periods are demonstrated.

DOI
10.1364/ol.34.002372

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We report on the first, to our knowledge, experimental observation of spectral Bloch oscillations in an optical fiber employing the interaction between a probe signal and a traveling-wave periodic potential. The spectrum of weak probe pulses is shown to oscillate on account of their group-velocity mismatch to the periodic field. The behavior of a cw probe spectrum reveals the actual discrete nature of the effect. Recurrences of the spectrum after one and two Bloch periods are demonstrated.
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The interaction of a strong nearly resonant cw pump laser and a weak cw probe laser in a medium consisting of two-level atoms was studied by numerical integration of the Maxwell-Bloch equations. With propagation into the optically thick medium, the numerically calculated probe gain spectrum deviates substantially from one calculated by a four-wave-mixing formulation of coupled-wave theory with an undepleted pump. For probe frequencies inside the modified gain region, the laser field, initially in an unstable steady-state condition, evolves to a stable solution of the sine-Gordon equation.
Bloch oscillations of cold atoms in two-dimensional optical lattices are studied. The cases of separable and nonseparable potentials are compared by simulating the wave-packet dynamics. For these two classes of optical potential, the Bloch oscillations were found to be qualitatively the same in the case of a weak static field but fundamentally different in the case of a strong field. In addition, the dynamics of the atoms in a double-period potential (which can easily be realized in two dimensions) is studied for the regime of a weak static field.
Here we investigate the Bloch oscillations (BOs) in a photonic spectral lattice created with four-wave mixing Bragg scattering (FWM-BS). By injecting a signal and two pumps with different frequencies into a silicon nitride waveguide, a spectral lattice can be created for the generated idlers through successive FWM-BS. The phase-mismatch during FWM-BS acts as an effective force that induces BOs in the spectral lattice. Both the oscillation period and amplitude are determined by the magnitude of the effective force. With cascaded FWM-BS processes, the spectrum of idlers experiences a directional shift as the phase differences of pumps are modulated. Additionally, introducing long-range couplings in the spectral lattice will change the trajectory of BOs within each period. The pattern of BOs for a single frequency input can also be tailored. This Letter provides a new platform to realize BOs in the frequency dimension and paves a promising way for broadband frequency control with all-optical schemes.