Lightons: phonons with light

Abstract

Spatial solitons are robust localized nonlinear waves that are able to propagate without significant changes to their structure. Most of the proposal of the application of solitons uses them to transmit and process information in optical fibers and optical circuits. In the later the solitons can be guided through different paths by presetting some soliton characteristics (such as the phase), and even using some solitons to control the path of other pulses. In this paper, we use these properties of optical spatial solitons in a cubic nonlinear media to have lightons: phonon-like oscillations of a chain of solitonic light pulses. Conceptually, this work aims to explore the dual nature of solitons as a particle-like wave, by considering the displacement wave of solitons in a 1-dimensional chain.