Waves, Solitons and Turbulence in Optical Systems - Abstract
Wiersma, Noémi
Collisions of optical beams in nonlinear media, such as in Kerr or photorefractive crystals, have been extensively studied. Under strong focusing conditions, the beams undergo solitonic behaviour and present peculiar interaction schemes with various spatiotemporal dynamics. In recent years, the self-trapping character of Airy beams in biased nonlinear media has suggested interesting dynamics such as soliton-like behaviours. First numerical studies of co-propagating Airy beams have shown peculiar interactions toward the generation of soliton pair.
We numerically study the interactions of two incoherent counterpropagating Airy beams in a photorefractive crystal under nonlinear high-focusing conditions. By varying the interaction length and the photorefractive coupling strength, soliton-like interactions also create peculiar spatiotemporal dynamics.
Under weak nonlinear focusing conditions, we demonstrate that multiple waveguiding structures can be photo-induced in the medium such as with a deflecting trajectory and/or beam splitting properties. This would otherwise require the interaction of more than two Gaussian beams. When we increase the nonlinear coupling strength of our system, we show that the self-focusing property of the photorefractive crystal leads to non-static soliton-like interactions between the two Airy beams. The system dynamically evolves from a steady-state regime to time-dependent stable and turbulent states. By taking advantage of the Airy properties - and in particular the deflection and transverse properties - this system presents various chaotic-like routes with larger interaction schemes than using conventional counterpropagating beams’ systems.