Modulation instability with incoherent white light in self-defocusing photorefractive crystal

We report on the first experimental observation of modulation instability and spontaneous pattern formation with incoherent white light emitted from an incandescent lamp in self-defocusing photorefractive LiNbO3:Fe crystal. Experimental results show that the modulation instability of white light in self-defocusing medium is related to the input intensity, illumination time and the direction of the crystalline c-axis with respect to that of the lamp filament. At the illumination time t = 0 and the steady-state of MI, we give the spatial distribution of the optical Fourier power spectrum experimentally and the corresponding Fourier transformation of the output intensity numerically, and observe the emergence of the high frequency component along the c-axis.