Homogeneous solutions for elliptically polarized light in a ring cavity with a non-linear metamaterial

D.A. MÁRTIN; M. HOYUELOS

La Plata

Conferencia; Humboldt Kolleg - International Conference on Physics, Argentine-Germany: a century of scientific cooperation in Physics; 2011

We study evolution equations and stationary homogeneous solutions for electric and magnetic field amplitudes in a ring cavity with flat mirrors. The cavity is filled with a positive or negative refraction index material with third order Kerr-like electric nonlinearites an also magnetic nonlinearities, which can be relevant in metamaterials. We consider the degree of freedom of polarization in the incident beam. Other authors have reported an about 100 factor increase of Kerr effects on nanostructured materials compared to typical values. Also, it is found that considering a magnetic nonlinearity increases the variety of possible qualitatively different solutions. A classification of solutions is proposed in terms of the number of bifurcations. The analysis can be useful for the implementation of optical switching or memory storage using ring cavities with nonlinear structured materials, which may require lower input powers than usual materials.