Modulational instability in nonlocal nonlinear Kerr media | Wieslaw Krolikowski, Ole Bang, Jens Juul Rasmussen, John Wyller
| | Abstract | We study modulational instability (MI) of plane waves in nonlocal nonlinear Kerr media. For a focusing nonlinearity we show that, although the nonlocality tends to suppress MI, it can never remove it completely, irrespective of the particular profile of the nonlocal response function. For a defocusing nonlinearity the stability properties depend sensitively on the response function profile: for a smooth profile (e.g., a Gaussian) plane waves are always stable, but MI may occur for a rectangular response. We also find that the reduced model for a weak nonlocality predicts MI in defocusing media for arbitrary response profiles, as long as the intensity exceeds a certain critical value. However, it appears that this regime of MI is beyond the validity of the reduced model, if it is to represent the weakly nonlocal limit of a general nonlocal nonlinearity, as in optics and the theory of Bose-Einstein condensates. | | Type | Journal paper [With referee] | | Journal | Physical Review E | | Year | 2001 Month July Vol. 64 No. 1 pp. 1-8/016612 | | BibTeX data | [bibtex] | | IMM Group(s) | Mathematical Physics |
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