Self-similar collapse and blow up of laser beams in nonlinear Kerr media—Revisited

Some features of the blow up and collapse phenomena characteristic of the focusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation are discussed. Particular attention is given to recently found solutions describing self-similar collapse in the form of ring-shaped structures. The characteristic parameters of such collapsing rings are found and particular single-humped initial conditions giving rise to ring formation are also discussed. The possibility of self-similarly collapsing beams with parabolic intensity profiles is investigated and used to infer the blow up distance of initially Gaussian beams. The result is shown to be in good agreement with previous empirical results for the blow up distance.