During my PhD I studied nonlinear optical propagation in which the vector nature of the
electric field plays an important role, such as vector soliton bound states, polarization
modulational instability. Some works were analytical, others consisted in numerical
simulations and experiments. I also investigated a new method to fully characterize
trains of optical pulses.
I went in postdoctoral stay at Laval University (Canada), in the COPL (Center for
Optics, Photonics and Lasers), under the supervision of Prof. Sophie LaRochelle, were I
fabricated and used Fiber Bragg Gratings. In particular, together with José Azaña from
the McGill University, I proposed a new means to characterize optical trains of pulses
by the use of stretched superimposed fiber Bragg gratings, that leaded to a patent.
After that, I contributed works about soliton propagation and their stability. Together
with colleagues from ULB and VUB, we were among the very first to investigate nonlinear
optical propagation in left-handed metamaterials, and proposed a new cavity scheme in
which a right- and a left-handed materials were combined in an externally driven
spatially-extended optical resonator. We identified a zero-diffraction regime and
investigated the nonlinear dynamics occuring in such cavities depending on the sign of
the effective diffraction. In order to verify the various theoretical predictions in
cavities with negative diffraction, I proposed a way to build an effective left-handed
material with classical optical lenses. This way of proceeding has been implemented at
the Lille university, and it proved to be successfull. In parallel to these works on
spatial solitons, I contributed to the first experimental demonstration of the temporal
cavity soliton, and to the analytical description of the interesting dynamical features
of a double-pass cavity, which are based on a new kind of incoherent nonlinear optical
feedback.
These last years, I also devoted part of my scientific activities to experimental
characterization of the nonlinear optical properties of some materials, including
various kinds of quantum dots and graphene, and to lasing in liquid crystal cells,
namely through the direction and co-direction of three Master thesis. Two PhD students
are now working on these topics, with the support of a FRIA grant.
