Impact of self-steepening on incoherent dispersive spectral shocks and collapselike spectral singularities

Abstract

Incoherent dispersive shock waves and collapselike singularities have been recently predicted to occur in the spectral evolution of an incoherent optical wave that propagates in a noninstantaneous nonlinear medium. Here we extend this work by considering the generalized nonlinear Schr\odinger equation. We show that self-steepening significantly affects these incoherent spectral singularities: (i) It leads to a delay in the development of incoherent dispersive shocks, and (ii) it arrests the incoherent collapse singularity. Furthermore, we show that the spectral collapselike behavior can be exploited to achieve a significant enhancement (by two orders of magnitudes) of the degree of coherence of the optical wave.