Dislocations in Laser Fields

Abstract

Screw dislocations or vortices have recently been observed in laser fields and calculated from the laser equations. These defects are particle-like solutions. In the experiments the dislocations are found to form “molecules” or even “crystals” due to the mutual interaction and the forces of gradients in the background field. Most interesting structure formation in aggregation of defects can therefore be expected on the one hand, and interesting statistical (“thermodynamic”) properties of chaotically moving defects — a two-dimensional defect “gas” — on the other hand. At present the most interesting results come from comparisons of two complementary approaches: the direct solution of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation to which the laser equations can be reduced in the simplest case and mode expansions.

Alexander von Humboldt fellow, visiting from Vilnius University, 2054 Vilnius, Lithunia