Optical Instabilities in Passive Semiconductors

L. A. Lugiato, Lorenzo M. Narducci, R. Leféver

Bruno J. Thedrez

Markus Lindberg, S. W. Koch, H. Haug

W. J. Firth, Scott Sinclair

By considering a passive ring cavity with linear absorption in the dispersive limit, a unified analysis is presented for tuning-optimized minimum instability thresholds; the treatment is general, allowing consideration of arbitrary material response times, cavity tuning and finesse. In the adiabatic limit (τ → 0) the results reduce to the usual Ikeda map. The case of long medium-response time (τ → ∞) is treated in some detail in the high-finesse limit; these conditions being of particular relevance to semiconductor laser amplifiers. It is found analytically that in the high-finesse limit, both optical bistability and self-pulsing instabilities should exhibit the same low-threshold behaviour. An analytical expression is derived for the ‘instability threshold curve’, A 2 B against B for minimum A 2, in the mapping limit.

Chi C. Sung, C. M. Bowden

Mustapha Tlidi, A. G. Vladimirov, Paul Mandel

We study the stability of localized structures in a passive optical bistable system. We show that there is a critical value of the input field intensity above which localized structures are unstable with respect to a curvature instability. Beyond this instability boundary, a transition from the localized branch of solutions to stable hexagons is found.