Abstract

Optics offers a variety of unstable phenomena which lead to the spontaneous onset of a temporal structure: systems with stationary control parameters display an oscillatory or pulsed, periodic, or chaotic output On the other hand, there are systems (e.g., nonlinear chemical reactions) which exhibit the spontaneous onset of a spatial dissipative structure. ¹ The system admits a homogeneous stationary state, which, for a critical value of the control parameter, becomes unstable against the growth of an inhomogeneous mode. As a consequence the system approaches a new nonuniform steady state. To our knowledge, no phenomenon of this type was ever found in the field of optics. The spatial structures of transverse² and longitudinal³ type discovered in optical bistability arise from quite different mechanisms. We propose the model of an optical system which displays the onset of a stationary spatial dissipative structure.

© 1987 Optical Society of America