title: Spatial Rogue Waves in Photorefractive Ferroelectrics.
abstract: Rogue waves are observed as light propagates in the extreme nonlinear regime that occurs when a photorefractive ferroelectric crystal is undergoing a structural phase transition. The transmitted spatial light distribution contains bright localized spots of anomalously large intensity that follow a signature long-tail statistics that disappears as the nonlinearity is weakened. The isolated wave events form as out-of-equilibrium response and disorder enhance the Kerr-saturated nonlinearity at the critical point. Self-similarity associable to the individual observed filaments and numerical simulations of the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation suggests that dynamics of soliton fusions and scale invariance can microscopically play an important role in the observed rogue intensities and statistics.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pierangeli
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.|Center for Life Nano Science@Sapienza, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, 00161 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Mei
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.|ISC-CNR, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Conti
authors.affiliation: Applied Physics Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904 Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Agranat
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: DelRe