Spatiotemporal chaos from a continuousNa2laser

We report on the observation of spatiotemporal chaos in a multimode continuous ${\mathrm{Na}}_2$ ring laser optically pumped by a single-mode ${\mathrm{Ar}}^{+}$ laser. Measurements of the intensity of the emitted beam at two different points of the beam cross section reveal different temporal behavior of those two signals. Power spectra, fractal dimensions, and correlations indicate that both signals are chaotic and are generated by a common attractor.