6533b86cfe1ef96bd12c7e72

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Self-organization of incoherent optical waves : Condensation, thermalization and repolarization

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The subject of this thesis concerns the study of phenomena of self-organization of incoherentoptical waves. This work is essentially theoretical and numerical and relies on different formalisms of waveturbulence theory, the Hamiltonian singularities, and different experiments.The first part of the thesis deals with the irreversible processes of thermalization and condensation ofincoherent waves. The phenomenon of condensation is characterized by the formation of a large scale co-herent structure (condensate) that remains immersed in a sea of small scale fluctuations (uncondensedparticules). In spite of the large propagation lengths required to reach the condensed equilibrium state, wehave identified theoretically and experimentally in atomic vapors a phenomenon of pre-condensation thatoccurs far from thermal equilibrium and that plays the role of a precursor for the asymptotic equilibriumstate. On the other hand, on the basis of recent experimental observations of the effect of beam self-cleaningin multimode optical fibers, we have developed a kinetic wave turbulence approach that accounts for theimpact of a structural disorder of the material. The theory reveals that disorder leads to a significant ac-celeration of the condensation process, which can explain the beam self-cleaning effect. Our experimentsreport the observation of the transition from the thermal distribution toward condensation with a macro-scopic fraction of condensed power into the fundamental mode. We have studied the impact of a highlynonlocal (or non-instantaneous) response on the nonlinear propagation of a speckle beam, which allowedus to identify a mechanism of spontaneous emergence of long-range phase coherence.The second part of the manuscript is based on a phenomenon of polarization attraction when two in-coherent waves are injected at both ends of an optical fiber. The spatio-temporal dynamics of the counter-propagating partially polarized waves relax toward a quasi-stationary state characterized by a phenomenonof self-polarization that occurs just in the middle point of the optical fiber. This effect is related to the pre-sence of singularities in the Hamiltonian system associated to the stationary state.