Zitterbewegung of optical pulses in nonlinear frequency conversion

Stefano Longhi (1)

1 Dipartimento di Fisica

Pulse walk-off in the process of sum frequency generation in a nonlinear χ (2) crystal is shown to be responsible for pulse jittering which is reminiscent to the Zitterbewegung (trembling motion) of a relativistic freely moving Dirac particle. An analytical expression for the pulse center of mass trajectory is derived in the nopump-depletion limit, and numerical examples of Zitterbewegung are presented for sum frequency generation in periodically-poled lithium niobate. The proposed quantumoptical analogy indicates that frequency conversion in nonlinear optics could provide an experimentally accessible simulator of the Dirac equation.

Keywords: Physical Sciences

Stefano Longhi. Zitterbewegung of optical pulses in nonlinear frequency conversion. Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 2010, 43 (20), pp.205402. ⟨10.1088/0953-4075/43/20/205402⟩. ⟨hal-00569855⟩