Abstract

The phenomena of spontaneous formation of two-dimensional patterns in the radiation field, when it interacts with nonlinear materials, have attracted a growing interest in the field of nonlinear optics over the last decade, for the spectacular variety of static and dynamical configurations one can meet. The tutorial will overview these phenomena and, especially, will explain in simple terms the mechanisms which govern optical pattern formation (Fig.1). Even if they are not basically different from those which preside spatial structure formation in other fields such as, for example, hydrodynamics or nonlinear chemical reactions, the case of optics is attractive because one can obtain an intuitive picture of the patterns which arise, from the conservation laws of total photon energy and momentum.

© 1996 Optical Society of America