Of interest to scientists working in the field of optics or nonlinear physics, this book gives an overview of current developments in nonlinear photorefractive optics. It dicusses exciting discoveries, with special emphasis on transverse effects such as spatial soliton formation and interaction, spontaneous pattern formation and pattern competition in active feedback systems. Different aspects of potential applications, such as wave guiding in adaptive photorefractive solitons and techniques for pattern control for information processing, are also described. The author Professor Denz received the Lise Meitner Prize in 1993 for her dissertation on photorefractive neural networks and in 1999 the Adolf Messer Prize for the development of an optical motion detection filter.

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Autorentext

Annika Kruse, M.Sc. Physik, promoviert am Schülerlabor MExLab Physik in Münster und ist dort für die Koordination sowie die Entwicklung des Workshopangebots zuständig. Cornelia Denz ist Professorin am Institut für Angewandte Physik der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU). Sie ist Leiterin des Schülerlabors MExLab Physik sowie Prorektorin für Internationales und wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchs an der WWU.

Klappentext
The book gives an overview of actual developments in nonlinear photorefractive optics and is intended for scientists working in the field of optics or nonlinear physics. It is meant as an introduction to actual exciting discoveries in this area, with special emphasize on transverse effects such as spatial soliton formation and interaction, spontaneous pattern formation, and pattern competition in active feedback systems. In all these areas, different aspects of potential applications, such as wave guiding in adaptive photorefractive solitons and techniques for pattern control for information processing, are described. Experimental realizations demonstrate the variety of photorefractive patterns, and different two-dimensional simulations prove the experimental observations.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Light propagation in nonlinear optical media.- The photorefractive nonlinearity.- Spatial photorefractive solitons in anisotropic, saturable media.- Interaction of spatial solitons in saturable and photorefractive media.- Self-organized pattern formation in single-feedback systems.- Selection, manipulation and control of self-organized patterns.- Transverse patterns in active photorefractive oscillators.