MULTIBEAMLET COMPETITION IN A UNIDIRECTIONAL PHOTOREFRACTIVE RING OSCILLATOR USING A COMPUTER-GENERATED HOLOGRAM

We present an experimental demonstration in which a computer generated hologram is used in a photorefractive ring oscillator, A large number of oscillating modes in a form of beamlets can be observed in the osc illator. Competition between beamlets can be controlled via the intens ity level of the injected beamlets. It is found that the strongest bea mlet will eventually suppress the rest of the beamlets resulting in '' winner-takes-all'' dynamics. The grating formation between beamlets is included in our theoretical derivation as well as those between pump and beamlets. Numerical simulation of the evolution equations of the g ratings qualitatively reproduces the experimental results.