Frustrated optical instability: Self-induced spatial instability of polarization in nonlinear optical media

Maker et al. predicted and demonstrated experimentally that the axes of vibrational ellipse for elliptically polarized light rotate as a function of distance in isotropic Kerr-like media.1 Nonlinear eigenpolarization has been predicted recently by Kaplan for interfering beams (degenerate collinear four wave mixing geometry) in isotropic Kerr-like media. 2 In this paper, we extend their analyses to anisotropic crystals and provide a new aspect to the nonlinear theory of wave propagation, that is, the deterministic spatial instability of polarization of interfering beams.