Modulational instability in $\cal{PT}$-symmetric Bragg grating structures with saturable nonlinearity

Abstract: We investigate the nontrivial characteristics of modulational instability (MI) in a system of Bragg gratings with saturable nonlinearity. We also introduce an equal amount of gain and loss into the existing system which gives rise to an additional degree of freedom, thanks to the concept of $\cal PT$- symmetry. We obtain the nonlinear dispersion relation of the saturable model and discover that such dispersion relations for both the conventional and $\cal PT$- symmetric cases contradict with the conventional Kerr and saturable systems by not displaying the typical signature of loop formation in either the upper branch or lower branch of the curve drawn against the wavenumber and detuning parameter. We then employ a standard linear stability analysis in order to study the MI dynamics of the continuous waves perturbed by an infinitesimal perturbation. The main objective of this paper is twofold. We first investigate the dynamics of the MI gain spectrum at the top and bottom of the photonic bandgap followed by a comprehensive analysis carried out in the anomalous and normal dispersion regimes. As a result, this perturbed system driven by the saturable nonlinearity and gain/loss yields a variety of instability spectra, which include the conventional side bands, monotonically increasing gain, the emergence of a single spectrum in either of the Stokes wavenumber region, and so on. In particular, we observe a remarkably peculiar spectrum, which is caused predominantly by the system parameter though the perturbation wavenumber boosts the former. We also address the impact of all the physical parameters considered in the proposed model which include coupling coefficient, dispersion parameter, and saturable nonlinearity on the phenomenon of MI for different $\cal PT$- symmetric regimes ranging from unbroken to broken one in greater detail.