Influence of four-wave mixing and walk-Off on the self-focusing of coupled waves

Phys Rev Lett. 2000 Apr 10;84(15):3302-5. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.3302.

Abstract

Four-wave mixing and walk-off between two optical beams are investigated for focusing Kerr media. It is shown that four-wave mixing reinforces the self-focusing of mutually trapped waves by lowering their power threshold for collapse, only when their phase mismatch is small. On the contrary, walk-off inhibits the collapse by detrapping the beams, whose partial centroids experience nonlinear oscillations.