Nonlinear interaction and reflection of incoherent light beams

Coherent addition of spatially incoherent light beams.

We report on efficient coherent addition of spatially incoherent multimode laser beam distributions. Such addition is demonstrated within a multi-channel laser resonator configuration, obtaining more than 90% combining efficiency while preserving the good beam quality. We explain the rather surprising physical phenomenon of coherently adding spatially incoherent light by self-phase-locking of e...

Modulation instability and pattern formation in spatially incoherent light beams.

We report on the experimental observation of modulation instability of partially spatially incoherent light beams in noninstantaneous nonlinear media and show that in such systems patterns can form spontaneously from noise. Incoherent modulation instability occurs above a specific threshold that depends on the coherence properties (correlation distance) of the wave packet and leads to a periodi...

Generation of optical bottle beams by incoherent white-light vortices.

We generate experimentally optical bottle beams from incoherent double-charge white-light vortices, and show that their parameters can be efficiently controlled by varying the beam focusing conditions.

Modulation instability of incoherent beams in noninstantaneous nonlinear media

We show that modulation instability can exist with partially spatially incoherent light beams in a noninstantaneous nonlinear environment. For such incoherent modulation instability to occur, the value of the nonlinearity has to exceed a threshold imposed by the degree of spatial coherence.

Modulation Instability of Spatially-Incoherent Light Beams and Pattern Formation in Incoherent Wave Systems