TRANSVERSE MODULATIONAL INSTABILITY OF COLLINEAR WAVES

The transverse modulational instability, or filamentation, of two collinear waves is investigated, using a coupled nonlinear Schr6dinger-equation model. For infinite media it is shown that the presence of the second laser field increases the growth rate of the instability and decreases the scale length of the most unstable filaments. Systems of two copropagating waves are shown to be convectively unstable and systems of two counterpropagating waves are shown to be absolutely unstable, even when the ratio of backward- to forward-wave intensity is small. For two counterpropagating waves in finite media, the threshold intensities for the absolute instability depend only weakly on the ratio of wave intensities. The general theory is applied to the pondermotive filamentation of two light waves in homogeneous plasma. © 1990 Optical Society of America.