Abstract

We study spatiotemporal pattern formation associated with the polarization degree of freedom of the electric field in a mean field model [1,2] describing a cavity with flat mirrors filled with a Kerr medium and driven by a coherent plane-wave field. We consider linearly as well as elliptically polarized driving field and situations of self-focusing and self-defocusing. We explore the full range of cavity detunings where there is no bistability for the homogeneous solution.

© 1998 IEEE