ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of some recent work on deterministic chaos and nonlinear dynamics in the field of nonlinear optics. After presenting a general discussion of the nature of the instabilities that can develop in nonlinear optical systems, it looks at two specific examples of systems that display interesting dynamical behavior, that of counterpropagating waves in atomic vapors and that of stimulated Brillouin scattering (sbs). Closely related to absolute instabilities are parametric instabilities. These instabilities also entail the growth of a finite perturbation from an arbitrarily small initial value, but they can occur under static conditions. From a more practical point of view, counterpropagating waves are present in many optical and opto-electronic devices, and the stability characteristics of such a device would be expected to depend critically on the stability characteristics of the pump waves. The chapter reviews recent work on the dynamical properties of single-beam sbs.
