BISTABILITY OF A NONLINEAR DIFFRACTION STRUCTURE IN THE VICINITY OF A WOOD'S ANOMALY.

The problem of plane-wave diffraction by a metal grating of strips, located at the interface between linear and nonlinear media, is examined. A system of nonlinear equations, suitable for both a qualitative analysis as well as for numerical calculations, is obtained by joining the fields in partial regions followed by an application of the method of residues. It is shown that near Wood's anomalies it becomes unstable due to the action of diffraction nonlinearity, and hysteresis jumps occur from one steady-state diffraction mode to another.