Four-photon homoclinic instabilities in nonlinear highly birefringent media

We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of a nonconventional (i.e., pumped by a mixed-mode wave) modulational instability in a highly birefringent nonlinear dispersive medium. We find that the depleted regime of propagation beyond the linearized stage can be described analytically in a proper region of the parameter space. In this case the governing coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations, which are not integrable, are reduced to an integrable one-dimensional nonlinear oscillator that rules the propagation of the pump wave and a single sideband pair. This approach permits us to predict the existence of stable and unstable manifolds of time-periodic solutions of the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations. The nonlinear dynamics governed by these equations mimics the period-doubling instabilities associated with the homoclinic separatrices in the reduced phase space. Moreover, our approach is also capable of describing the onset of spatial chaos that occurs when the parameter values are such that the additional degree of freedom represented by the conjugated sidebands becomes effective.