Spatiotemporal dynamics of lasers with a large fresnel number

This study shows experimental evidence of the absence of 'defects' in the transverse intensity pattern of a laser with Fresnel number 60. It shows the appearance of chaotic oscillations centered around the relaxation oscillation frequency, and the loss of spatial correlation. The results can be explained as a characteristic of the Maxwell-Bloch equations when two 'fields' are involved in the dynamics, one a scalar field obeying the Kuramoto-Shivasinsky equation and the other complex field that obeys a Swift-Hohenberg equation.