Patterns of water in light

Abstract

The intricate patterns emerging from the interactions between soliton stripes of a two-dimensional defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) model with a non-local nonlinearity are considered. We show that, for sufficiently strong non-locality, the model is asymptotically reduced to a Kadomtsev–Petviashvilli-II (KPII) equation, which is a common model arising in the description of shallow water waves, as such patterns of water may indeed exist in light (this non-local NLS finds applications in nonlinear optics, modelling beam propagation in media featuring thermal nonlinearities, in plasmas, and in nematic liquid crystals). This way, approximate antidark soliton solutions of the NLS model are constructed from the stable KPII line solitons. By means of direct numerical simulations, we demonstrate that non-resonant and resonant two- and three-antidark NLS stripe soliton interactions give rise to wave configurations that are found in the context of the KPII equation. Thus, our study indicates that patterns which are usually observed in water can also be found in optics.