Incoherent Shock and Collapse Singularities in Non-Instantaneous Nonlinear Media

Abstract

We study the dynamics of a partially incoherent optical pulse that propagates in a slowly responding nonlinear Kerr medium. We show that irrespective of the sign of the dispersion (either normal or anomalous), the incoherent pulse as a whole exhibits a global collective behavior characterized by a dramatic narrowing and amplification in the strongly non-linear regime. The theoretical analysis based on the Vlasov formalism and the method of the characteristics applied to a reduced hydrodynamic model reveal that such a strong amplitude-incoherent pulse originates in the existence of a concurrent shock-collapse singularity (CSCS): The envelope of the intensity of the random wave exhibits a collapse singularity, while the momentum exhibits a shock singularity. The dynamic behavior of the system after the shock-collapse singularity is characterized through the analysis of the phase-space dynamics.