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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 96 » Issue 13
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 133901 (2006) [4 pages]

Collapse of Optical Vortices

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Luat T. Vuong, Taylor D. Grow, Amiel Ishaaya, and Alexander L. Gaeta*
School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA

Gert W. ’t Hooft and Eric R. Eliel
Huygens Laboratory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

Gadi Fibich
Department of Applied Mathematics, School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

Received 13 December 2005; published 6 April 2006

We theoretically and experimentally investigate the self-focusing of optical vortices in Kerr media. We observe collapse to a distinct self-similar profile, which becomes unstable to azimuthal perturbations. We analyze the azimuthal modulational instability for ring-shaped vortices and predict the number of azimuthal maxima solely as a function of power and topological charge. In our experiments, the observed multiple-filamentation patterns are in excellent agreement with our theoretical analysis.

© 2006 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.133901
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.133901
PACS:
42.65.Sf

*Electronic address: a.gaeta@cornell.edu

 
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