Filamentation processes and dynamical excitation of light condensates in optical media with competing nonlinearities

TL;DR

This paper investigates filamentation and light condensate formation in media with competing cubic and quintic nonlinearities, combining theory and simulations to reveal mechanisms for controlling and observing these phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework and numerical evidence for filamentation dynamics and light condensate excitation in nonlinear media with competing nonlinearities, linking experiments and simulations.

Findings

Suppression of modulational instability in high-intensity pulses.

Identification of a new indirect excitation mechanism for light condensates.

Numerical confirmation of filamentation and condensate formation processes.

Abstract

We analyze both theoretically and by means of numerical simulations the phenomena of filamentation and dynamical formation of self-guided nonlinear waves in media featuring competing cubic and quintic nonlinearities. We provide a theoretical description of recent experiments in terms of a linear stability analysis supported with simulations, showing the possibility of experimental observation of the modulational instability suppression of intense light pulses travelling across such nonlinear media. We also show a novel mechanism of indirect excitation of {\em light condensates} by means of coalescence processes of nonlinear coherent structures produced by managed filamentation of high power laser beams.