Self-action of Bessel wave packets in a system of coupled light guides and formation of light bullets

The self-action of two-dimensional and three-dimensional Bessel wave packets in a system of coupled light guides is considered using the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The features of the self-action of such wave fields are related to their initial strong spatial inhomogeneity. The numerical simulation shows that for the field amplitude exceeding a critical value, the development of an instability typical of a medium with the cubic nonlinearity is observed. Various regimes are studied: the self-channeling of a wave beam in one light guide at powers not strongly exceeding a critical value, the formation of the “kaleidoscopic” picture of a wave packet during the propagation of higher-power radiation along a stratified medium, the formation of light bullets during competition between self-focusing and modulation instabilities in the case of three-dimensional wave packets, etc. In the problem of laser pulse shortening, the situation is considered when the wave-field stratification in the transverse direction dominates. This process is accompanied by the self-compression of laser pulses in well enough separated light guides. The efficiency of conversion of the initial Bessel field distribution to two flying parallel light bullets is about 50%.     

Capture of excess electrons by triplet-state anthracene molecules in liquid isooctane

Conclusions Rate constants for the reaction of the excess electron with electronically excited acceptor molecules in liquid hydrocarbons have been obtained for the first time through direct measurements.Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk SSSR, Seriya Khimicheskaya, No. 5, pp. 989–992, May, 1979.     

Optical metrics and birefringence of anisotropic media

The material tensor of linear response in electrodynamics is constructed out of products of two symmetric second rank tensor fields which in the approximation of geometrical optics and for uniaxial symmetry reduce to “optical” metrics, describing the phenomenon of birefringence. This representation is interpreted in the context of an underlying internal geometrical structure according to which the symmetric tensor fields are vectorial elements of an associated two-dimensional space.     

Structural features of the self-action dynamics of ultrashort electromagnetic pulses

Self-focusing dynamics of electromagnetic pulses of arbitrary duration is analyzed numerically and analytically. The wave-field evolution is considered by the wave equation in the reflectionless approximation under quite general assumptions about the dispersion of the medium. Methods for qualitative investigation of the self-focusing dynamics of quasimonochromatic radiation are generalized to the case of wave packets with the length of a few oscillation periods. In particular, sufficient conditions for collapse and many other integral relations are obtained by the momentum method. A self-similar-type transformation is used to show that new structural features are primarily associated with the nonlinear dispersion of the medium (with the dependence of the group velocity of a wave packet on its amplitude). Numerical analysis confirms that the self-focusing of radiation is preceded by an increase in the steepness of the longitudinal profile.     

Non-minimal pp-wave Einstein–Yang–Mills–Higgs model: color cross-effects induced by curvature

Non-minimal interactions in the pp-wave Einstein–Yang–Mills–Higgs (EYMH) model are shown to give rise to color cross-effects analogous to the magneto-electricity in the Maxwell theory. In order to illustrate the significance of these color cross-effects, we reconstruct the effective (associated, color, and color-acoustic) metrics for the pp-wave non-minimal seven-parameter EYMH model with parallel gauge and scalar background fields. Then these metrics are used as hints for obtaining explicit exact solutions of the non-minimally extended Yang–Mills and Higgs equations for the test fields propagating in the vacuum interacting with curvature. The influence of the non-minimal coupling on the test particle motion is interpreted in terms of the so-called trapped surfaces, introduced in the Analog Gravity theory.     

On self-focusing of an ultrashort intense relativistic laser pulse in a plasma

The development of the spatiotemporal (filamentation) instability of a laser pulse upon excitation of a plasma wave is studied numerically and analytically. It is shown that first, as in a medium with inertialless cubic nonlinearity, the filamentation of radiation occurs and then filaments are attracted to each other. The following evolution differs weakly from the evolution of a smoothed wave beam in a medium with inertial nonlinear response.     

Ionization of solvent molecules by the field evaporation of ions from glycerol and ethylene glycol solutions

Using an electromembrane source, mass-spectrometric investigations into the field evaporation of ions from KI solutions in a water-glycerol mixture and in ethylene glycol are performed. The concentration of negatively charged solvent ions (deprotonated molecules) on the emitting surface of the liquid is determined. It is shown that, under the conditions of intense field evaporation of ions, the surface concentration of deprotonated glycerol and ethylene glycol molecules is several orders of magnitude higher than their equilibrium concentration in the absence of an electric field. The high concentration of solvent ions is associated with an increase in the autoprotolysis constant in a strong electric field.