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Physical Review A

Experimental and theoretical study of longitudinally monomode vectorial solid-state lasers

M. Brunel, Olivier Émile, Mehdi Alouini, A. Le Floch, Fabien Bretenaker

Published Jan 1, 1999• 32 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The dynamics of a quasi-isotropic continuous-wave solid-state laser sustaining the oscillation of two orthogonally polarized eigenstates is experimentally investigated. A set of phase-sensitive vectorial Maxwell-Bloch equations is developed to describe theoretically the evolution of such a laser. Different temporal behaviors for the output intensities are observed, depending on the relative amounts and orientations of the phase and loss anisotropies and on the frequency of relaxation oscillations. Namely, the frequency locking of the two orthogonally linearly polarized eigenstates is shown to lead to a surprising pulsed mode-locked oscillation regime. In addition, for different values of the parameters, other peculiar operation regimes are found, such as cw circularly polarized, double-pulsed, or triple-pulsed output intensities. These experimental results, obtained using a diode-pumped Nd:YAG (YAG denotes yttrium aluminum garnet) laser, are well confirmed by the theoretical model.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.59.831

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The dynamics of a quasi-isotropic continuous-wave solid-state laser sustaining the oscillation of two orthogonally polarized eigenstates is experimentally investigated. A set of phase-sensitive vectorial Maxwell-Bloch equations is developed to describe theoretically the evolution of such a laser. Different temporal behaviors for the output intensities are observed, depending on the relative amounts and orientations of the phase and loss anisotropies and on the frequency of relaxation oscillations. Namely, the frequency locking of the two orthogonally linearly polarized eigenstates is shown to lead to a surprising pulsed mode-locked oscillation regime. In addition, for different values of the parameters, other peculiar operation regimes are found, such as cw circularly polarized, double-pulsed, or triple-pulsed output intensities. These experimental results, obtained using a diode-pumped Nd:YAG (YAG denotes yttrium aluminum garnet) laser, are well confirmed by the theoretical model.
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We report a direct experimental observation of antiphase oscillations in population dynamics in lasers. We show that these population oscillations are intrinsically related to the well-known antiphase polarization dynamics, i.e., the antiphase oscillations of two orthogonal polarization laser field states. We have used a class BBB Nd:YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) laser.
The all-optical control of the polarization in a vectorial bistable monomode laser by injection with a second laser is analyzed theoretically and performed experimentally. The polarization is shown to switch following either an externally induced rotation or an externally induced inhibition mechanism. The usual theory of scalar-locking phenomena is extended to vectorial systems. We show that there is a single locking range in the induced rotation process occurring for low phase anisotropy values, whereas there are two distinct locking ranges in the induced inhibition process for higher anisotropy values. The theoretical results are in good agreement with experiments realized with 3He–20Ne lasers. By scanning the injected signal frequency, optical gates with high signal-to-noise ratios are experimentally obtained.
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