Nonlocal lattice solitons in thermal media

Received 5 March 2008; published 16 June 2008We study the properties of solitons in thermal nonlocal media media having an infinite range of nonlocalitywith a periodic refractive index modulation. Such self-localized solutions exist for both signs of the nonlin-earity and exhibit a host of features that have no counterpart in local or nonlocal media with finite rangenonlocality. Perhaps the most intriguing property is that families of bright solitary pulses can exist inside thebands of the band structure. This property is attributed to the infinite range of nonlocality as well as to theboundary conditions applied to the system. Families of solitons bifurcating from higher-order band edges,otherwise unstable in local media, are found to be stable.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.77.063824 PACS number s : 42.65.Tg, 42.65.Jx