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Physical Review A

Instabilities in continuous-wave light propagation in absorbing media

S. L. McCall

Published Apr 1, 1974• 305 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The stability of a monochromatic constant-intensity laser beam propagating through a resonant medium is considered. It is found that many absorbers should exhibit a region of negative conductivity and, consequently, amplify perturbations. The associated gain is dependent on a number of variable parameters, such as laser-beam intensity, perturbation frequency, relaxation times, degeneracy, transverse mode, inhomogeneous broadening, etc. Putting absorbers inside Fabry-Perot interferometers allows the construction of plane-wave devices with a bistable output.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.9.1515

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The stability of a monochromatic constant-intensity laser beam propagating through a resonant medium is considered. It is found that many absorbers should exhibit a region of negative conductivity and, consequently, amplify perturbations. The associated gain is dependent on a number of variable parameters, such as laser-beam intensity, perturbation frequency, relaxation times, degeneracy, transverse mode, inhomogeneous broadening, etc. Putting absorbers inside Fabry-Perot interferometers allows the construction of plane-wave devices with a bistable output.
The transmission characteristics of a Fabry-Perot cavity containing a resonant absorber are described analytically and graphically for internal fields of arbitrary intensity. The multimode instability considered by Bonifacio and Lugiato [Opt. Commun. 19 , 72 (1976)] for the unidirectional ring laser is treated for the standing-wave cavity. In particular, an instability may exist when the medium is located at one of the ends of the cavity, but not if the medium fills the cavity. The results are explained in terms of induced side-mode gain and spatial hole burning.
Our work concerns the study of the effect of the optical bistability and multistability in a laser saturable absorber of a Fabry Perot resonator with a homogenous widening. We theoretically studied the influence of the losses of the resonators on the optical bistability by examining mainly the cases where the losses of the resonator depend on the position of the emitted mode of a frequency and the losses of the resonator depend on the density of photons We examined the influence of the physical parameters of laser saturable absorber such as the coefficient of saturation and pumping of the medium active and absorbing on the density of the photons for each loss We showed the effect of the optical bistability and multistability then we analyzed the linear stability of the solutions obtained.
We analyze the gain behavior of an optical amplifier that is optically pumped by two counterpropagating beams that are mutually coherent. The pump beams interfere inside the amplifier, resulting in a nonuniform distribution of the pumping. In the low-pump-intensity regions of the amplifier, the medium absorbs, and in the high-pump-intensity regions amplification can be obtained. The combination of the absorbing regions and the amplifying can lead to bistable behavior inside a resonator. The effect was analyzed for three-level gain media applicable to erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and lasers.
The optical bistability (OB) behavior of single-mode Fabry- Perot lasers containing saturable absorber (LSA) is presented on the basis of the rate equations with allowance for spontaneous emission and spatial hole-burning. Special attention is paid to the case of dominant inhomogeneous broadening in both Lorentzian and Gaussian models. The OB occurrence conditions are clearly displayed in phase diagrams. The influence of the main LSA parameters on OB characteristics as well as on OB curves' stability are investigated in detail. Some practical suggestions for optimizing the bistable operation in LSA are also given.