Taranenko V. Spatial self-organization in nonlinear optical cavities: periodic structures and solitons

The work is devoted to the investigation of a resonant spatial self-organization responsible for spontaneous or stimulated (controlled) symmetry breaking in nonlinear optical cavities that results in formation of stable self-sustained transverse (perpendicular to the direction of the light propagation) dissipative optical structures which are independent of initial and boundary conditions. The nonlinear processes and mechanisms of the resonant spatial self-organization for passive nonlinear resonators, lasers and optical wave mixing oscillators are studied in details both experimentally and numerically. The existence of various types of cavity spatial solitons and periodic structures has been proved experimentally, namely: 1) structures with a fixed phase in passive nonlinear cavities (in particular, bright/dark solitons, rolls and hexagons in semiconductor microcavities), 2) laser solitons (both static and dynamic) with a free phase in lasers and two-wave-mixing photorefractive oscillators with saturable absorber on bacteriorhodopsin, and 3) structures with a bistable phase (optical domain walls, ring phase-solitons, rolls and labyrinth-like structures) in four-wave-mixing photorefractive oscillators.