Multicomponent photorefractive cnoidal waves: Stability, localization, and soliton asymptotics

An algorithm of building up a different class of stable self-consistent multicomponent periodical solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation--multicomponent cnoidal waves--has been formulated by the example of a nonlinear wave propagating through a photorefractive crystal with a drift nonlinear response. Exact analytical expressions, describing distribution of light field in the components, have been obtained for solutions, which include up to three mutually incoherent components. It has been shown that such cnoidal waves are stable and their spatial structure is robust to collisions with the same cnoidal waves and to stochastic perturbations of the components' intensity distributions in a sufficiently wide range of changing spatial period.