Experimental demonstration of phase bistability in a broad area optical oscillator with injected signal

We demonstrate experimentally that a broad area laser-like optical oscillator (a nondegenerate photorefractive oscillator) with structured injected signal displays two-phase patterns. The technique (G. J. de Valcarcel and K. Staliunas, Phys. Rev. Lett. (105), 054101 (2010)) consists in spatially modulating the injection, so that its phase alternates periodically between two opposite values, i.e. differing by pi