Synchronized spatiotemporal chaos and spatiotemporal on-off intermittency in a nonlinear ring cavity

We numerically study the transverse Ikeda system describing a ring cavity with a saturable absorber nonlinearity which is driven by a coherent input field. The Gaussian shape of the input beam favors the solutions to have space inversion symmetry. These solutions bifurcate into states of synchronized spatiotemporal chaos where synchronization refers to the identical dynamics of the two beam halves. We demonstrate that the breakdown of this synchronized chaotic state is caused by on-off intermittency. The qualitative and quantitative features of the transition are studied. In particular, the scaling behavior of the transition in the space domain is investigated, The results display a qualitative similarity with the scaling behavior of spatiotemporal intermittency.