Experimental studies of the instabilities and phase transitions in light-matter interaction will be continued. These experiments are in part an outgrowth of the experiments being carried out with NSF support and they build upon experience and techniques developed to study fluctuation phenomena in laser- matter interactions. The proposed experiments include investigations of the effects of colored multiplicative noise on various types of laser instabilities. These experiments would be very timely in view of the current interest in noise induced transitions in nonequilibrium systems. The fluctuation and instabilities in the process of second harmonic generation will also be studied as a way of initiating a study of the instabilities of nonlinear optical systems. The proposed experiments will provide much needed experimental data in a rapidly growing field.
