Modulation instability in metamaterials with fourth-order linear dispersion, second-order nonlinear dispersion, and three kinds of saturable nonlinearites

The linearized nonlinear propagation equation and its coefficients, gain spectrum of modulation instability (MI) in metamaterials (MMs) with fourth-order linear dispersion, second-order nonlinear dispersion, and three kinds of saturable nonlinearites, are analytically deduced by utilizing the linear stability analysis and Drude electromagnetic model. Then variations of gain spectra of MI with the normalized angular frequencies and the optical power densities are calculated in real units. In the negative refractive region, two kinds of gain spectra are discovered. The first (second) one is close to (far from) the zero perturbation frequencies and it corresponds to the lower (higher) normalized angular frequencies. Moreover, the second one has higher cutoff frequency, which is obviously beneficial to generation of high-repetition-rate pulse trains. While in the positive refractive region, only the first kind of gain spectra is found. With increase of the optical power densities, the peak gains and the spectral widths of MI increase before decrease, but they vary the most rapidly (slowly) for the exponential (conventional) saturable nonlinearities. The MI characteristics and their corresponding applications can be adjusted by several methods. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.