Nonlinear Optics and the Physics of Optical Solitons

Synopsis

When light reaches high intensities, the assumption that light-matter interactions are linear starts to breakdown, and new interesting phenomena emerge—this is the field of nonlinear optics. This talk gives an introduction to nonlinear optics and briefly covers some of the key emerging effects such as second harmonic generation, optical rectification, and the Kerr effect. The focus will be on explaining how nonlinear effects allow the formation of optical solitons—wave-packets which perfectly retain their shape in space (or time, or both!) as they propagate, exactly cancelling out the effects of diffraction and dispersion.