Nonlinear spectrum reshaping and gap-soliton-train trapping in optically induced photonic structures.

We report the first theoretical prediction and experimental demonstration of gap soliton trains in a self-defocusing photonic lattice. Without a priori spectral or phase engineering, a stripe beam whose spatial power spectrum lies only in one transverse direction evolves into a gap soliton train with power spectrum growing also in the orthogonal direction due to nonlinear transport and spectrum reshaping. Our results suggest that, in nonlinear k-space evolution, energy can transfer not only between regions of normal and anomalous diffraction, but also from initially excited regions to initially unexcited regions.