Photorefractive accelerating pulses
Date
2002Source
Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and GeneralVolume
35Issue
5Pages
1283-1295Google Scholar check
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The existence of similarity reductions having x - 2Vz - kz2 as similarity variable is demonstrated for a number of evolution systems arising in optoelectronics. The parameter k (≠0) corresponds to acceleration if z represents time, but corresponds to curvature if z is the propagation distance. This is of current relevance to photorefractivity, which is known both theoretically and experimentally to predict self-guiding optical beams. The link between space-charge diffusion (which breaks the x ↔ -x symmetry) and beam curvature is shown. A perturbation analysis for small diffusivity is used to predict how k and the beam profile depend on beam power and on diffusivity. The results agree well with computations for the ordinary differential equations, which are continued to larger diffusivities over a wide range of beam powers.