Controlled observation of a nonequilibrium Ising-Bloch transition in a nonlinear optical cavity

Abstract

We describe the controlled observation of the nonequilibrium Ising-Bloch transition in a broad area nonlinear optical cavity, namely, a quasi-1D single longitudinal-mode photorefractive oscilator in a degenerate four-wave mixing configuration. Our experimental technique allows for the controlled injection of the domain walls. We use cavity detuning as control parameter and find that both Ising and Bloch walls can exist for the same detuning values within a certain interval of detunings, i.e., the Ising-Bloch transition is hysteretic in our case. A complex Ginzburg-Landau model is used for supporting the observations.

Three and 1/3 text pages and four figures. Replaced with resubmitted version that now includes a theoretical approach

References in corpus (3)

• Transverse Patterns in Nonlinear Optical Resonators
• Points, Walls and Loops in Resonant Oscillatory Media
• Ising-Bloch Transition in Degenerate Optical Parametric Oscillators

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