Abstract

The instability of a plane wave in an optical medium with two-photon absorption is studied. The analysis is based on the modified nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The linearized equation for the modulation is shown to have an exact solution in terms of confluent hypergeometric functions. It is found that the gain spectrum varies with position. This may result in a change of the wave dynamics and in a decrease of the repetition rate of the pulse train developed from the plane wave. The application of the results to the optical pulse propagation in semiconductor gratings and fiber gratings is discussed.

© 2001 Optical Society of America

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