Geometrical optics in nonlinear media and integrable equations

Abstract

It is shown that the geometrical optics limit of the Maxwell equations for certain nonlinear media with slow variation along one axis and particular dependence of dielectric constant on the frequency and fields gives rise to the dispersionless Veselov-Novikov equation for refractive index. It is demonstrated that the last one is amenable to the quasiclassical DBAR-dressing method. A connection is noted between geometrical optics phenomena under consideration and quasiconformal mappings on the plane.