Quasiclassical Dynamics of Nonlinear Wave Systems

Abstract

The paper presents a brief review of the quasiclassical wave dynamics for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) as applied to focusing and defocusing media. The NLSE depends significantly on the space dimension d. The two-dimensional NLSE has an additional symmetry of the conformal type with respect to the Talanov transformations (Talanov in JETP Lett. 11:199–201, 1970), which were initially found for the stationary self-focusing in a medium with the Kerr nonlinearity. A consequence of this symmetry is the Vlasov–Petrishchev–Talanov theorem (Vlasov et al. in Radiophys. Quantum Electron. 14:1062–1070, 1971) that relates the mean of the squared distribution and the Hamiltonian of the system. This theorem is valid for both focusing and defocusing media. In the quasiclassical limit, this makes it possible to construct anisotropic solutions which describe beam compression during self-focusing and quantum-gas expansion into vacuum within the so-called critical nonlinear Schrödinger equations, in particular, for the Gross–Pitaevskii equation with a chemical potential having a power-law dependence on density with the exponent ν = 2/d. For the Gross–Pitaevskii equation, the case d = 2 corresponds to a condensate of a weakly nonideal Bose gas, and the case d = 3 describe condensate of a Fermi gas in the unitary limit. For d = 3, the Gross–Pitaevskii equation in the quasiclassical limit transforms into equations of the gas dynamics with the adiabatic exponent γ = 5/3. The self-similar solutions in this approximation describe the angular deformations of a gas cloud against the background of an expanding gas. Angular deformations of such type are observed in both the expansion of quantum gases and the action of high-power laser radiation on matter. For three-dimensional supercritical focusing NLSE, the quasiclassical solutions of the collapsing type are presented, including the exact semiclassical solution described by the strong collapse regime. It is found that all such quasiclassical collapses are found to be unstable, except for the collapse that is simultaneously the weakest and the fastest collapse corresponding to the self-similar NLSE solution. The problem of post-collapse is also considered as the continuation of a weak collapse, which results in the formation of a quasistationary singularity in the form of a black hole into which energy is drawn from the surrounding collapsing region. For the NLSE with d ≥ 4, the formation of a black hole can be described in the quasiclassical approximation. It is shown that the anisotropy caused by the magnetic field significantly alters the structure of the Langmuir collapse, in particular, leads to the formation of strongly anisotropic black holes described quasiclassically.