Spatio-temporal instability in negative index materials

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate spatiotemporal instability in negative index materials (NIMs) made of split ring resonators and arrays of wires embedded in a Kerr medium. The pulse propagation in NIM is modeled by nonlinear Schrödinger type equation. The linear stability analysis is carried out to obtain the instability gain. We study the influence of electric and magnetic self steepening effects and coupling between electric and magnetic fields on MI gain. We report additional ways to generate solitons or ultrashort pulses in negative index artificial materials.