Observation of transverse instabilities in optically induced lattices

Opt Lett. 2004 Feb 1;29(3):259-61. doi: 10.1364/ol.29.000259.

Abstract

We study experimentally the Bloch-wave instabilities in optically induced photonic lattices. We reveal two different instability scenarios associated with either the transverse modulational instability of a single Bloch wave or the nonlinear interband coupling between different Bloch waves. We show that the transverse instability is greatly enhanced in the induced lattice in comparison with homogeneous media.