Optical Thermodynamics Beyond the Weak Nonlinearity Limit

2026/02/13 by Emily Kabat, Shrohan Mohapatra, P. G. Kevrekidis +1 · 1 voice
Physics and Astronomy · #nlin.PS #physics.optics

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/372m-bnpr

arxiv published 2026/02/13 · arxiv updated 2026/06/17

Abstract

Optical thermodynamics has recently emerged as a theoretical framework describing a Rayleigh-Jeans (RJ) modal power distribution of multimoded nonlinear photonic circuits. However, its applicability is constrained to systems exhibiting weak nonlinear mode-mode interactions. Here, by employing a Transfer Integral Operator, we circumvent this limitation and establish a steady-state interacting RJ modal distribution -- referred to as non-ideal RJ (NIRJ) -- with renormalized temperature and optical chemical potential. This also builds a natural bridge with earlier work on grand-canonical statistical-mechanical formulations of discrete nonlinear systems. The theory derives the optical analogue of the compressibility factor, which controls the transition from an ideal, non-interacting equation of state (EoS) to a van der Waals-like interacting EoS.

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Discussions

• Emily Kabat, Shrohan Mohapatra, P. G. Kevrekidis, Tsampikos Kottos: Optical Thermodynamics Beyond the Weak Nonlinearity Limit https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13161 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.13161 https:// [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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