Abstract

The spatiotemporal dynamics of optical resonators have recently received much attention, partly because of their potential applications and because they offer a convenient means of studying the nonlinear dynamics of extended systems. Attention has been focused on two types of resonators, the laser and the photorefractive ring.¹ In both cases, an expansion of the resonator field in terms of empty cavity modes is a useful way of analyzing the spatiotemporal dynamics. However,, for a phase-conjugate resonator a modal expansion is less justifiable. Because the phase-conjugate mirror is active only when providing gain and because it adapts itself dynamically to the cavity field, there are no empty cavity eigentnodes.

© 1995 Optical Society of America