Pattern formation in optical resonators

Patter formation is ubiquitous in nature. Examples include the stripes on a zebras skin and the ripples in wind-blown dunes. Through the interaction between microscopic elements of the system, a macroscopic order may spontaneously emerge when a system is brought outside of equilibrium. In optics, the interaction of a focusing nonlinearity with a diffusion -like process such as diffraction of dispersion leads to the formation of stable modulated patterns. We investigate, both experimentally and theoretically the dynamics of temporal dissipative structures in nonlinear optical resonators. Picture : ULB stored as cavity solitons in a fiber resonator