Abstract

Recently a new interest in quadratic optical nonlinearities could be noticed. Whereas in the past the attention was focused on an effective second harmonic generation, today most investigations are concentrated on basic non-liner effects of the coupled system of the fundamental and second harmonics. This includes e.g. soliton propagation or the attempt to obtain a maximum modulation of the fundamental only. Device concepts, originally developed for cubic nonlinearities, are now used t support and to enhance quadratic nonlinearities. One of these devices is the planar Fabry-Perot resonator, which is known to exhibit a variety of nonlinear phenomena such as bistability, self-oscillations and modulational instabilities. It was demonstrated, e.g. in [1,2] that some of these phenomena can be found for quadratic nonlinearities as well. Here we focus in particular on modulational instabilities.

© 1996 Optical Society of America