Improved effective linearization of nonlinear Schrödinger waves by increasing nonlinearity

Abstract

From among the waves whose dynamics are governed by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, we find a robust, spatiotemporally disordered family, in which waves initialized with increasing amplitudes, on average, over long timescales, effectively evolve as ever more weakly coupled collections of plane waves. In particular, the relative amount of energy contained in their coupling decays to zero with increasing wave amplitude.