Spurious four-wave mixing processes in generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equations

Abstract

Numerical solutions of a nonlinear Schödinger equation, e.g., for pulses in optical fibers, may suffer from the spurious four-wave mixing processes. We study how these nonphysical resonances appear in solutions of a much more stiff generalized nonlinear Schödinger equation with an arbitrary dispersion operator and determine the necessary restrictions on temporal and spatial resolution of a numerical scheme. The restrictions are especially important to meet when an envelope equation is applied in a wide spectral window, e.g., to describe supercontinuum generation, in which case the appearance of the numerical instabilities can occur unnoticed.