Conservative finite-difference scheme for the problem of propagation of a femtosecond pulse in a photonic crystal with combined nonlinearity

A conservative finite-difference scheme is constructed for the problem of propagation of a light pulse in a one-dimensional nonlinear photonic crystal with combined nonlinearity. The invariants of the corresponding differential problem and their difference analogues are given. The scheme is compared with those based on the widespread splitting method. For combined cubic and quadratic nonlinearity in photonic crystal layers, it is shown that the classical splitting method is ineffective, since it requires time steps that are smaller by one or more orders of magnitude. The finite-difference scheme proposed conserves the propagation invariants, which cannot be achieved for splitting schemes even on considerably finer grids. Nonreflecting conditions substantially improve the efficiency of conservative finite-difference schemes as applied to the simulation of complex nonlinear effects in photonic crystals, which require much smaller steps in space and time than those used in the case of linear propagation. The simulation is based on the approach proposed by the authors for the given class of problems.