Abstract

It is an interesting feature of localized structures that they react to external perturbations as particle-like entities In numerical simulations of different model systems localized structures have been shown to drift on phase and intensity gradients of the light field, to interact with their neighbors and to be very sensitive with respect to small variations of the background intensity [1] In our experiment we investigate these phenomena in a single mirror setup and demonstrate that phase gradients due to self induced lensing in a limited beam play a crucial role.

© 2000 IEEE