Excitation of switching waves in normally dispersive Kerr cavities

A coherently pumped, passive cavity supports, in the normal dispersion regime, the propagation of still interlocked fronts or switching waves that form invariant localized temporal structures. We address theoretically the problem of the excitation of this type of wave packet. First, we map all the dynamical behaviors of the switching waves as a function of accessible parameters, namely, the cavity detuning and input energy deficiency, using box-like excitation of the intracavity field. Then we show how a good degree of control can be obtained by applying a negative or positive external pulsed excitation.