Condensation of optical waves in multimode fibers: observation and thermodynamic characterization

Recent studies in wave turbulence have shown that classical random waves can exhibit a condensation process resulting from the divergence of the Rayleigh-Jeans (RJ) equilibrium distribution, in analogy with the Bose-Einstein condensation (refs. in [1] ). However, the observation of condensation of freely propagating optical waves is hampered by the prohibitive long propagation lengths required by the RJ thermalization process.