Frustrated Optical Instability: Self-Induced Periodic and Chaotic Spatial Distribution of Polarization in Nonlinear Optical Media

Abstract

The universal nature of self-induced polarization rotation in nonlinear optical media having a third-order nonlinearity is depicted in terms of phase-space trajectories characterized by separatrix orbits. The existence of nonlinear eigenpolarization, and of periodic synchronized spatial as well as chaotic spatial distributions of the polarization of light, are found in the mutual interaction of counterpropagating laser beams (collinear degenerate four-wave mixing geometry). Such spatial polarization turbulences cause a frustrated optical instability in input- versus output-intensity characteristics, when a fixed output polarization is selected.