Abstract

Formation of transversal patterns and the appearance of phase singularities in nonlinear optical systems have attracted growingly interest in recent years [1, 2]. Up to now, most theoretical and experimental work has been performed for Maxwell–Bloch systems. However, it also turned out that these phenomena can be found in other nonlinear optical feedback configurations as well. Even if the system presented in this paper has in some aspects ’exotic’ properties (compared to Maxwell–Bloch models), it nevertheless shows similar pattern formation with broken symmetry [3, 4, 5]. We now present the first experimental evidence of phase singularities in the intracavity wave.

© 1992 Optical Society of America