Generalized Ginzburg-Landau equations for phase transition-like phenomena in lasers,nonlinear optics,hydrodynamics and chemical reactions

The recently found close analogies between the continuous mode laser, the Bénard instability, and chemical instabilities with respect to their phase transition-like behaviour are shown to have a common root. We start from equations of motion containing fluctuations. We first assume external parameters permitting only stable solutions and linearize the equations, which define a set of modes. When the external parameters are changed the modes getting unstable are taken as order parameters. Since their relaxation time tends to infinity the damped modes can be eliminated adiabatically leaving us with a set of nonlinear coupled order parameter equations resembling the time dependent Ginzburg-Landau equations with fluctuating forces. In two and three dimensions additional terms occur which allow for e.g. hexagonal spatial structures. We also treat the hard mode instability and obtain the stationary distribution function as solution of the Fokker-Planck equation. Our procedure has immediate applications to the Taylor instability, to various chemical reaction models, to the parametric oscillator in nonlinear optics and to some biological models. Furthermore, it allows us to treat analytically the onset of laser pulses, higher instabilities in the Bénard and Taylor problems and chemical oscillations including fluctuations.