Optical Beam Instabilities In Nonlinear Nanosuspensions

We investigate the modulation instability of plane waves and the transverse instabilities of soliton stripe beams propagating in nonlinear nanosuspensions. We show that in these systems the process of modulational instability depends on the input beam conditions. On the other hand, the transverse instability of soliton stripes can exhibit new features as a result of ID collapse caused by the exponential nonlinearity. © 2007 Optical Society of America