Boosting and Taming Wave Breakup in Second Harmonic Generation

Autor: Raphaël Jauberteau, Sahar Wehbi, Tigran Mansuryan, Katarzyna Krupa, Fabio Baronio, Benjamin Wetzel, Alessandro Tonello, Stefan Wabnitz, Vincent Couderc
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Frontiers in Physics, Vol 9 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2296-424X
DOI: 10.3389/fphy.2021.640025
Popis: Modulation instability is a universal phenomenon that can be found in a wide variety of nonlinear systems where, in the presence of a noise seed, peaks of random intensities can be generated. Several dynamical systems admit exact solutions in the form of breathers or solitons on a finite background. The vast majority of soliton studies has been restricted so far to one-dimensional systems. In contrast, the occurrences of localized structures in fully spatiotemporal systems has been only sporadically explored. In this work, we experimentally study the conditions for the wave-breaking of spatially extended optical beams in the process of second harmonic generation. Whenever the pump energy of the picosecond-long fundamental beam reaches a critical level, the beam shape at the second harmonic in a KTP crystal breaks into small filaments. These filaments exhibit extreme local intensity peaks, and their statistical distribution can be modified by the input energy of the fundamental beam. Moreover, by analyzing similar wave-breaking dynamics in a PPLN crystal in the presence of a higher nonlinear quadratic response, we observe that the spatial beam breaking may even gradually vanish as the laser intensity grows larger, leading to a spatial reshaping into a smooth and wider beam, accompanied by a substantial broadening of its temporal spectrum.
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