Propagation dynamics of a light beam in fractional Schr\"odinger equation

Abstract: Dynamics of wavepackets in fractional Schrodinger equation is still an open problem. The difficulty stems from the fact that the fractional Laplacian derivative is essentially a nonlocal operator. We investigate analytically and numerically the propagation of optical beams in fractional Schr\"odinger equation with a harmonic potential. We find that the propagation of one- and two-dimensional (1D, 2D) input chirped Gaussian beams is not harmonic. In 1D, the beam propagates along a zigzag trajectory in the real space, which corresponds to a modulated anharmonic oscillation in the momentum space. In 2D, the input Gaussian beam evolves into a breathing ring structure in both real and momentum spaces, which forms a filamented funnel-like aperiodic structure. The beams remain localized in propagation, but with increasing distance display increasingly irregular behavior, unless both the linear chirp and the transverse displacement of the incident beam are zero.