Basic transverse dynamics of a photorefractive oscillator

Abstract

The basic phenomena of transverse dynamics of a two-wave mixing photorefractive oscillator (PRO) in the weakly multimode case are considered. The evolution of the transverse patterns as a function of two control parameters, namely, the cavity length and the PRO gain, is investigated. The behavior is described in terms of the modes of the empty cavity. It is found that the mode interactions occur differently, depending on whether the modes belong to the same frequency-degenerate family or not, although in both cases the observed behavior is periodic.