Optical shock and blow-up of ultrashort pulses in transparent media

Ultrashort pulses can exhibit two distinctive types of singularity: self-focusing collapse and self-steepening shock. We examine various ultrashort pulse propagation models and their relative effectiveness in explaining these phenomena. In particular, the modified Kadomtsev-Petviashvilli equation of type 1 (MKP1) is examined in some detail. We show that MKP1 is not simply a few-cycle pulse model but is valid in a more general broad spectrum setting. Furthermore, we emphasize that the dispersion of the MKP1 model can result in poor estimation of frequency-dependent phenomena, such as harmonic generation, which occur far away from the carrier frequency. Some of this loss of accuracy can be removed by using a more general MKP1 dispersion relation.