Phase instabilities in absorptive optical bistability

A. J. van Wonderen, L.G. Suttorp

P. Galatola, Luigi A. Lugiato, M. Vadacchino +1 more

John C. Englund, William C. Schieve, Wojciech Hubert Zurek +1 more

Steve Stuut, Murray Sargent

The effects of Gaussian-beam averaging with various apertures are derived for three-wave mixing in nonlinear two-level media. The model studies the phase transition from plane-wave to pure Gaussian saturation. Applications to phase conjugation, beat-frequency spectroscopy, and laser–optical-bistability instability phenomena are considered. The Gaussian beams are seen to reduce or wash out dynamic Stark splittings observed for plane-wave saturation. For strong saturation, the side-mode gain/absorption coefficient versus detuning yields slightly larger gain for the homogeneously broadened laser instability but substantially curtailed gain for the corresponding absorptive optical-bistability instability.

Lorenzo M. Narducci, James D. Farina, L. Benza

Thomas Erneux, Paul Mandel

We study the semiclassical mean-field theory of single-mode dispersive optical bistability in the limit of a fully developed hysteresis cycle (i.e., in the limit of large values of the bistability parameter C) and when all decay rates have comparable magnitude. We locate (i) on the upper branch instabilities leading to time periodic regimes, (ii) on the lower branch instabilities leading to a switching before the limit point is reached. None of these instabilities are observed in the case of purely absorptive optical bistability.