Pawel S. Jung

Abstract In recent years, a self-consistent optical thermodynamic framework has emerged that offers a systematic methodology to understand, harness and exploit the complex collective dynamics of multimode nonlinear systems. These developments now allow consideration of a series of long-standing problems in optics, including the prospect of funnelling the entire power flowing in a multimode system into its ground state, for which no methodology currently exists.

By utilizing the theoretical tools of optical thermodynamics, we investigate thermalization in nonlinear disordered lattices beyond the diffusion regime. Even under extreme levels of disorder, we analytically predict the expected thermal value of entropy and the associated Rayleigh-Jeans distribution, once thermalization ensues.

The theory of optical thermodynamics provides a comprehensive framework that enables a self-consistent description of the intricate dynamics of nonlinear multimoded photonic systems. This theory, among others, predicts a pressurelike intensive quantity (p^) that is conjugate to the system’s total number of modes (M)—its corresponding extensive variable. Yet at this point, the nature of this intensive quantity is still nebulous.