Cavity solitons in diffraction-managed optical resonators

We study optical resonators in which diffraction is controlled by use of a left-handed material. We show that it is possible to change the strength of diffraction due to the phase compensation between right-handed and left-handed materials in such systems. This control of diffraction allows decreasing the size of cavity solitons. However, when such cavity solitons become sub-diffraction-limited, other effects starts to dominate their spatial structure. We show that the inherent nonlocal interaction in left-handed materials imposes a new limit on the width of cavity solitons, which is nevertheless smaller than possible with a diffraction-limited system.