Abstract

A well known pattern formation mechanism in nonlinear optical resonators is "off-resonant" excitation. If the central frequency of the gain line of the laser ω_A is larger than the resonator resonance frequency ω_R, then the excess of frequency Δω = ω_A− ω_R causes transverse (spatial) modulation of the laser fields, with characteristic transverse wavenumber k obeying a dispersion relation ak² = Δω (a is the diffraction coefficient of the resonator). Typical for off-resonance patterns is that the dominating transverse wavelength of emerging patterns scales with the square root of diffraction constant, and strongly depends on the off-resonance detuning.

© 2000 IEEE