Abstract

The last decade showed an increasing interest in the spatial and spatio-temporal effects which appear in the transverse structure of the radiation field in nonlinear optical systems, and these activities established the field of Transverse Nonlinear Optics. As summarized in a recent overview,^[1] these phenomena include spontaneous symmetry breaking of the translational and rotational symmetries, formation of vortices or hexagonal patterns, rotational structures, space-time chaos,^[2] and imply a profound analogy with hydrodynamics and other nonlinear systems.

© 1992 IQEC