| In this talk I propose the interpretation of light intensity variation in two coupled waveguides (optical directional coupler) with a tilted (with respect to the waveguide direction) barrier as Landau-Zener tunneling. Up to now this phenomenon in the optical context has been theoretically predicted and experimentally observed in waveguide arrays as transitions between Bloch modes. However, In these studies one has a periodical structure and it is hard to see clearly exotic nonlinear effects predicted by nonlinear extension of Landau-Zener model. While in case of our directional coupler setup, not only the nonlinear effects are observable, but one can even suggest some nontrivial applications. The possibility of existence of multiple Landau-Zener tunneling (when the transitions between different waveguide modes occur) is examined and the scenario for observation of Nonlinear Bloch oscillations is also discussed. |
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