Spontaneous pattern formation with incoherent white light.

We present the first experimental observation of modulation instability and spontaneous pattern formation with incoherent white light emitted from an incandescent light bulb. We show experimentally that modulation instability of white light propagating in a noninstantaneous self-focusing medium is a collective effect, where the entire temporal spectrum of the light beam becomes unstable at the same threshold value and collectively forms a pattern with a single periodicity. We experimentally demonstrate that the temporal spectrum of the evolving perturbation self-adjusts to match the collective pattern formation phenomenon.