Related papers: Shock waves in thermal lensing
The nonlinear propagation of low-frequency circularly polarized waves in a magnetized dusty plasma is analyzed. It is found that wave steepening and shock formation can take place due to the presence of nonlinear quantum vacuum effects,…
We investigate theoretically, numerically and experimentally nonlinear optical waves in an absorbing out-of-equilibrium colloidal material at the gelification transition. At sufficiently high optical intensity, absorption is frustrated and…
Cold atomic clouds constitute highly resonant nonlinear optical media, whose refractive index can be easily tuned via the light frequency. When subjected to a retro-reflected laser beam and under appropriate conditions, the cloud undergoes…
Using a scheme based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, we propose an analysis of the superposition of polarized laser beams at a given angle. The focus of our study is the spatially varying polarization state of the resulting field, also…
Nonlinear waves in defocusing media are investigated in the framework of the hydrodynamic description of light as a photon fluid. The observations are interpreted in terms of an emergent curved spacetime generated by the waves themselves,…
In recent times, we experimentally realized a quite efficient modeling of the shape of diffraction-resistant optical beams; thus generating for the first time the so-called Frozen Waves (FW), whose longitudinal intensity pattern can be…
Plane waves in Kerr media spontaneously generate paraxial X-waves (i.e. non-dispersive and non-diffractive pulsed beams) that get amplified along propagation. This effect can be considered a form of conical emission (i.e. spatio-temporal…
We report on theoretical and numerical study of propagation of atomic beams crossing a detuned standing-wave laser beam in the geometric optics limit. The interplay between external and internal atomic degrees of freedom is used to…
An optically-induced thermal non-linear effect in a nematic liquid-crystal (E7) cell is evidenced through weak light-absorption by the ITO coating of an infrared pulsed femtosecond laser (m). Strong spatial self-phase modulation is…
We present an overview of recent advances in the understanding of optical beams in nonlinear media with a spatially nonlocal nonlinear response. We discuss the impact of nonlocality on the modulational instability of plane waves, the…
The effect of a random phase screen on laser beam wander in a turbulent atmosphere is studied theoretically. The method of photon distribution function is used to describe the photon kinetics of both weak and strong turbulence. By bringing…
Thermo-optical effects cause a bifocusing of incoming beams in optical media, due to the birefringence created by a thermal lens that can resolve the incoming beams into two-component signals of different polarizations. We propose a…
Nonlinear optical media that are normally dispersive, support a new type of localized (nondiffractive and nondispersive) wavepackets that are X-shaped in space and time and have slower than exponential decay. High-intensity X-waves, unlike…
In this Letter we report observations of optically induced self-organization of colloidal arrays in the presence of un-patterned counter-propagating evanescent waves. The colloidal arrays formed along the laser propagation-axis are shown to…
Spatial field correlation functions represent a key quantity for the description of mesoscopic phenomena in disordered media and the optical characterization of complex materials. Yet many aspects related to the vector nature of light waves…
{Using two different approaches, we study imaging in the strong lens regime taking into account the effects of plasmatic environments on light propagation. First, we extend the use of a perturbative approach that allows us to quickly and…
We consider the step Riemann problem for the system of equations describing the propagation of a coherent light beam in nematic liquid crystals, which is a general system describing nonlinear wave propagation in a number of different…
In a novel experiment that images the momentum distribution of individual, isolated 100-nm-scale plasmas, we make the first experimental observation of shock waves in nanoplasmas. We demonstrate that the introduction of a heating pulse…
We begin with the theoretical study of spectral energy cascade due to the propagation of high amplitude sound in the absence of thermal sources. To this end, a first-principles-based system of governing equations, correct up to second order…
We show experimental and numerical evidence of spontaneous self-symmetrization of focused laser beams experiencing multi-filamentation in air. The symmetrization effect is observed as the multiple filaments generated prior to focus approach…