Journal of Applied Physics
Transverse effects and enhanced dispersive optical bistability in a nonlinear Fabry–Pérot filled with a self-focusing medium
R. Reinisch, Guy Vitrant
Abstract
This paper is concerned with transverse effects arising from diffraction in a nonlinear Fabry–Pérot filled with a self-focusing medium. It is shown that the resulting bistable loop is ‘‘enhanced’’ with respect to the plane-wave one. This result contrasts with the self-defocusing case where optical bistability disappears when decreasing the width of the input beam.