Temporal instabilities in an externally driven ring phase conjugator

Abstract

A ring self-pumped phase-conjugator mirror with an injected signal and an applied external electric field was studied in an experiment with a photorefractive strontium barium niobate crystal. Competition between the injected signal and free oscillation caused temporal instabilities in the output beam. Periodic and erratic pulsations of output intensity were observed as a function of the injected beam intensity and electric field strength. Numerical simulations of the theoretical model of this system confirmed the existence of the regime of unstable behavior.