Optical rogue waves and their trajectory control in Rydberg atomic gases

Rogue waves (RWs) are extreme events of huge amplitudes that may appear in various nonlinear systems. Finding stable RWs and realizing their control are desirable due to the interesting physics and various potential applications. Here, we show that the optical RWs generated in cold Rydberg atomic gases can be stabilized by increasing the nonlocality degree of nonlocal Kerr nonlinearity, contributed from the long-range Rydberg–Rydberg interaction. Moreover, the stable optical RWs may undergo significant deflections by applying a weak gradient magnetic field in the Rydberg atomic gases, and their motion trajectories can be actively controlled by tuning the magnetic-field gradient. The results reported here are helpful not only for understanding unique properties of RWs in nonlocal and nonlinear optical media, but also useful for precision measurements of magnetic fields.