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Phason dynamics in nonlinear photonic quasicrystals

Nature Materials volume 6, pages 776–781 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

We study the dynamics of phasons in a nonlinear photonic quasicrystal. The photonic quasicrystal is formed by optical induction, and its dynamics is initiated by allowing the light waves inducing the quasicrystal to nonlinearly interact with one another. We show quantitatively that, when phason strain is introduced in a controlled manner, it relaxes through the nonlinear interactions within the photonic quasicrystal. We establish experimentally that the relaxation rate of phason strain in the quasicrystal is substantially lower than the relaxation rate of phonon strain, as predicted for atomic quasicrystals. Finally, we monitor and identify individual ‘atomic-scale’ phason flips occurring in the photonic quasicrystal as its phason strain relaxes, as well as noise-induced phason fluctuations.

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Figure 1: Numerically constructed photonic quasicrystals, with and without a static linear phason-strain field.
Figure 2: Experimental observation of the relaxation of a linear phason-strain field in a photonic quasicrystal.
Figure 3: Experimental observation of phonon-strain and phason-strain relaxation following the injection of a dislocation into a photonic quasicrystal.
Figure 4: Effect of nonlinear interactions on phason density—measurements showing the exponential decay of the phason density.
Figure 5: Direct observation of phason flips that occur as a phason-strained photonic quasicrystal relaxes to its ground state.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Steinhardt for ideas about inducing artificial phason-strain fields. R.L. is grateful to M. de Boissieu, M. Cross and M. Widom for useful discussions. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation, the Israel–USA Binational Science Foundation, the German–Israeli DIP Project and the US National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physics Department and Solid State Institute, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel

    Barak Freedman & Mordechai Segev

  2. School of Physics & Astronomy, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

    Ron Lifshitz

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

    Jason W. Fleischer

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Freedman, B., Lifshitz, R., Fleischer, J. et al. Phason dynamics in nonlinear photonic quasicrystals. Nature Mater 6, 776–781 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1981

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