Nonlinear propagation and localisation in photonic crystal waveguides

Abstract: Anderson predicted that electrons diffused by a disordered potential in doped semiconductors see a metal-to-insulator transition of the material when the disorder is sufficiently high. In this manuscript we demonstrate an equivalent metal-to-insulator transition for nonlinear waves, namely Gap-Solitons, in disordered photonic crystal waveguides. Light localization is described by introducing a new metric able to track the wavepacket center of mass. By statistical averaging this quantity over many realizations of the disorder, we demonstrate that in linear regime the ensemble averaged barycenter matches the localization length lloc as defined in literature. Then, by applying our barycenter method, we prove that for Gap-Solitons the transition from localized to ballistic transport goes faster than the vg2 law ruling the linear regime. By overcoming this scaling law, improved robustness to disorder of nonlinear waves is demonstrated.