Experimental targeting and control of spatiotemporal chaos in nonlinear optics

The first experimental evidence of control of spatiotemporal chaos (STC) based upon real-space real-time feedback techniques. The technique was able to circumvent the above difficulties, thus allowing stabilization and targeting of two dimensional stationary patterns with arbitrary symmetries and shapes. The control strategy was shown to offers dynamical flexibility in switching from one to another target pattern, without the need of removing optical components in the control loop. The results show that the system is able to attain each one of the target patterns in the sequence for the same value of γ=0.4 and to switch between the different patterns.