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Physical Review Letters

Intrinsic Dynamical Instability in Optical Bistability with Two-Level Atoms

Luis A. Orozco, Albert T. Rosenberger, Harry J. Kimble

Published Dec 31, 1984• 69 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Self-pulsing instability is reported in an experiment in which two-level atoms couple to a single mode of a traveling-wave resonator to produce optical bistability. The threshold for the onset of oscillation together with the characteristics of the dynamical state are described. The self-pulsing instability observed is the analog in an absorbing system of the single-mode laser instability.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.53.2547

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Self pulsing due to the single-mode instability has been observed in optical bistability.1 This self-pulsing instability has its roots in corresponding instabilities first analyzed for the homogeneously broadened laser. It shares a common physical origin in the intrinsic mechanism by which a strong intracavity field alters the absorption profile of the intracavity medium to produce amplification at frequencies offset from that of the strong field.

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Physical Review Letters•Feb 1, 1988•32 citations
Self-pulsing instability is reported in an experiment in which two-level atoms couple to a single mode of a traveling-wave resonator to produce optical bistability. The threshold for the onset of oscillation together with the characteristics of the dynamical state are described. The self-pulsing instability observed is the analog in an absorbing system of the single-mode laser instability.
Beams of homogeneously broadened two-state sodium atoms in a confocal ring resonator have been employed to investigate the steady-state characteristics of absorptive [1] and dispersive optical bistability. Also studied in the same system is the dynamical behavior due to the intrinsic single-longitudinal-mode instability [2] originating in the alteration of the atomic absorption profile by a strong field as in the Lorenz-type instability in the homogeneously broadened laser. All experimental parameters are carefully measured and corrected for transit broadening, finite absorption, and residual Doppler broadening in order to be able to make an absolute comparison with the single-Gaussian-transverse-mode theory [3-6]. Despite the frequency degeneracy of the transverse modes of the resonator, the agreement with this theory for absorptive bistability is remarkably good. The dispersive bistability data are more difficult to interpret, but they seem to be in reasonable agreement with the theory; the same can be said of the results for the domain and oscillation frequency of the instability, at least within a certain region of parameter space. Outside this region, multiple unstable states appear for various intracavity intensities; recent observations suggest that these may be due in part to instabilities involving higher-order transverse modes of the resonator.
We have recently observed a sinewave self-pulsing in the beam transmitted by a passive cavity containing 2-level molecules, driven by a continuous wave. In this experiment made at a wavelength λ ≅ 3.5 mm, the intracavity Rabi frequency is comparable to the free spectral range ( 830 kHz ) of the very long cavity used (l =182 m) {1} and much larger than the collisional linewidth (≅ 25 kHz) .The medium is then strongly saturated by the driving field ( saturation parameter > 1000) so that its absorption , heavy in the linear regime (αl > 100), is in fact quite moderate. We claim that the self-pulsing observed in these conditions is the first experimental evidence of the multimode instability, predicted a long time ago by Bonifacio and Lugiato {2} but not yet observed. This instability is the multimode counterpart of the single mode instability, recently observed by Orozco et al {3}.
In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear dynamical behavior of dispersive optical bistability (OB) for a homogeneously broadened two-level atomic medium interacting with a single mode of the ring cavity without invoking the rotating wave approximation (RWA). The periodic oscillations (self-pulsing) and chaos of the unstable state of the OB curve is affected by the counter rotating terms through the appearance of spikes during its periods. Further, the bifurcation with atomic detuning, within and outside the RWA, shows that the OB system can be converted from a chaotic system to self-pulsing system and vice-versa.