Collisions of two solitons in an arbitrary number of coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations.

We show that pairwise soliton collisions in N>2 intensity-coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations can be reduced to pairwise soliton collisions in two coupled equations. The reduction applies to a wide class of systems, including the N-component Manakov system. This greatly simplifies the analysis of such systems and has important implications for the application of soliton collisions to all-optical computing.

Pattern formation via symmetry breaking in nonlinear weakly correlated systems.

We study pattern formation initiated by modulation instability in nonlinear partially coherent wave fronts and show that anisotropic noise and/or anisotropic correlation statistics can lead to ordered patterns.

Clustering of solitons in weakly correlated wavefronts.

We demonstrate theoretically and experimentally the spontaneous clustering of solitons in partially coherent wavefronts during the final stages of pattern formation initiated by modulation instability and noise.