Modulational instability in optical ring cavity.

The optical ring cavity has been studied for about ten years, both theoretically and experimentally. In these studies the uniform plane wave approximation has been used. In this work we investigate effects which result from the retention of the transverse diffraction. We establish that transverse structure is inevitable since plane wave fixed points are susceptible to transverse instabilities (modulational instability). We show that this instability is a universal mechanism for initiating various interesting and complicated, yet understandable, dynamical responses in a one and a two transverse dimensional cavity