Optical Turbulence: Chaotic Behavior of Transmitted Light from a Ring Cavity

It is theoretically shown that the transmitted light from a ring cavity containing a nonlinear dielectric medium undergoes transition from a stationary state to periodic and nonperiodic states, when the intensity of the incident light is increased. The nonperiodic state is characterized by a chaotic variation of the light intensity and associated broadband noise in the power spectrum. The experimental possibility of observing such a transition is also discussed.