Influence of four-wave mixing and walk-off on the self-focusing of coupled waves

Abstract

Four-wave mixing and walk-off between two optical beams are investigated for fo cusing Kerr media. It is shown that four-wave mixing reinforces the self-focusi ng of mutually-trapped waves by lowering their power threshold for collapse, on ly when their phase mismatch is small. On the contrary, walk-off inhibits the c ollapse by detrapping the beams, whose partial centroids experience nonlinear o scillations.