Light tunneling inhibition and anisotropic diffraction engineering in two-dimensional waveguide arrays

We address two-dimensional (2D) waveguide arrays where light tunneling into neighboring waveguides may be effectively suppressed by an out-of-phase harmonic modulation of the refractive index in neighboring waveguides at suitable frequencies. Genuine 2D features, such as anisotropic diffraction engineering, diffraction-free propagation along selected directions in the transverse plane, and tunneling inhibition for multichannel vortices, are shown to occur. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America