Theory of Spatial Optical Solitons in Metallic Nanowire Materials

Abstract: We characterize the spatial optical solitons supported by arrays of metallic nanowires embedded in Kerr-type material. The array of nanowires is described using an effective medium model and is regarded as a continuous medium. It is shown that the conditions necessary for the formation of spatial-solitons are radically different in presence of the nanowires, and in particular within the effective medium model spatial-solitons are allowed in the nanowire material only in case the host material is a "self-defocusing" material. It is proven that the characteristic soliton beamwidth is related to the degree of hyperbolicity of the isofrequency surfaces of the photonic states, and that a sufficiently strong electric field amplitude may enable subwavelength solitary waves.