A collection of prestigious postgraduate lectures, Nonlinear Dynamics and Spatial Complexity in Optical Systems reviews developments in the theory and practice of nonlinear dynamics and structural complexity, and explores modern-day applications in nonlinear optics. The book addresses systems including both singlemode and multimode lasers, bistable and multistable devices, optical fibers, counter-propagating beam interactions, nonlinear mixing, and related optical phenomena.

A collection of prestigious postgraduate lectures, Nonlinear Dynamics and Spatial Complexity in Optical Systems reviews developments in the theory and practice of nonlinear dynamics and structural complexity, and explores modern-day applications in nonlinear optics. The book addresses systems including both singlemode and multimode lasers, bistable and multistable devices, optical fibers, counter-propagating beam interactions, nonlinear mixing, and related optical phenomena.

A collection of prestigious postgraduate lectures, Nonlinear Dynamics and Spatial Complexity in Optical Systems reviews developments in the theory and practice of nonlinear dynamics and structural complexity, and explores modern-day applications in nonlinear optics. The book addresses systems including both singlemode and multimode lasers, bistable and multistable devices, optical fibers, counter-propagating beam interactions, nonlinear mixing, and related optical phenomena.

This book is the first comprehensive volume on nonlinear dynamics and chaos in optical systems. A few books have been published recently, but they summarize applied mathematical methodologies toward understanding of nonlinear dynamics in laser systems with small degrees of freedom focusing on linearized perturbation and bifurcation analyses. In contrast to these publications, this book summarizes nonlinear dynamic problems in optical complex systems possessing large degrees of freedom, systematically featuring our original experimental results and their theoretical treatments. The new concepts introduced in this book will have a wide appeal to audiences involved in a rapidly-growing field of nonlinear dynamics. This book focuses on nonlinear dynamics and cooperative functions in realistic optical complex systems, such as multimode lasers, laser array, coupled nonlinear-element systems, and their applications to optical processing. This book is prepared for graduate students majoring in optical and laser physics, but the generic nature of complex systems described in this book may stimulate researchers in the field of nonlinear dynamics covering different academic areas including applied mathematics, hydrodynamics, celestial mechanics, chemistry, biology, and economics.

The ?eld of applied nonlinear dynamics has attracted scientists and engineers across many different disciplines to develop innovative ideas and methods to study c- plex behavior exhibited by relatively simple systems. Examples include: population dynamics, ?uidization processes, applied optics, stochastic resonance, ?ocking and ?ightformations,lasers,andmechanicalandelectricaloscillators. Acommontheme among these and many other examples is the underlying universal laws of nonl- ear science that govern the behavior, in space and time, of a given system. These laws are universal in the sense that they transcend the model-speci?c features of a system and so they can be readily applied to explain and predict the behavior of a wide ranging phenomena, natural and arti?cial ones. Thus the emphasis in the past decades has been in explaining nonlinear phenomena with signi?cantly less att- tion paid to exploiting the rich behavior of nonlinear systems to design and fabricate new devices that can operate more ef?ciently. Recently, there has been a series of meetings on topics such as Experimental Chaos, Neural Coding, and Stochastic Resonance, which have brought together many researchers in the ?eld of nonlinear dynamics to discuss, mainly, theoretical ideas that may have the potential for further implementation. In contrast, the goal of the 2007 ICAND (International Conference on Applied Nonlinear Dynamics) was focused more sharply on the implementation of theoretical ideas into actual - vices and systems.

An in-depth exploration of the dynamics of lasers and other relevant optical systems for graduate students and researchers.