Physical Review A
Spectrotemporal dynamics of a two-coupled-mode laser
Éric Lacot, F. Stoeckel, D. Romanini, Alexander A. Kachanov
Abstract
In their review about intracavity laser spectroscopy, P. E. Toschek and V. Baev [in Laser Spectroscopy and New Ideas, edited by W. M. Yen and M. D. Levenson, Springer Series in Optical Science (Springer, Berlin, 1987)] have shown that multimode lasers are needed to obtain a high sensitivity. In this paper we show that two modes is enough. We discuss first the ideal case where only the spontaneous emission limits the sensitivity. In a second part we take into account the spatial hole burning, which couples the two modes and has for effect a lower limitation of the sensitivity. Analytical expressions are given for the modified absorption coefficient and the time evolution of the intensity of the two modes is calculated by numerical integration.