Dynamical effects in photorefractive Fabry-Perot resonators

摘要

We investigate polarization and intensity all-optical bi- and tri-stability in interference structures that include both a birefringent LiNbO_3 layer of different crystallographic orientations and an absorbing layer. The origin of this multistability is the thermo-optical nonlinearity present in the structures. Regenerative pulsations are demonstrated using the electro-optical and the photorefractive properties of the LiNbO_3 crystal. The unstable dynamical behaviour is explained heuristically as being due to competing nonlinearities.