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Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Transverse-Pattern Formation for Counterpropagating Laser Beams in Rubidium Vapour

A. Petrossian, M. Pinard, Agnès Maître, J.-Y. Courtois, G. Grynberg

Published Apr 15, 1992• 99 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An instability is observed when the intensity of two counterpropagating beams nearly resonant with the 5S1/2 → 5P1/2 transition of rubidium exceeds a threshold value. The instability manifests itself as a coherent emission on the polarization orthogonal to that of the incident beam with various spatial structures, depending on laser intensity and frequency. Bifurcation diagrams for the intensity of this instability with the associated transverse-pattern evolution are presented.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/18/8/005

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An instability is observed when the intensity of two counterpropagating beams nearly resonant with the 5S1/2 → 5P1/2 transition of rubidium exceeds a threshold value. The instability manifests itself as a coherent emission on the polarization orthogonal to that of the incident beam with various spatial structures, depending on laser intensity and frequency. Bifurcation diagrams for the intensity of this instability with the associated transverse-pattern evolution are presented.
We have observed that the polarizations and intensities of counterpropagating laser beams in sodium vapor are temporally unstable. The output from a stabilized dye laser tuned near to the 3S1/2 → 3P1/2 atomic transition was split to form the two counterpropagating beams. These beams were polarized with the same linear polarization and were weakly focused to a spot size of ~750 μm in sodium vapor having a density of ~3 × 1013 cm−3. We monitored the light generated in the polarization orthogonal to that of the pump beams. For a detuning of 1.01 GHz to the high-frequency side of the 3S1/2(F = 2) → 3P1/2(F = 2) transition and a power of 160 mW in one of the beams, we found that the threshold for the instability occurred at a power of 15 mW in the other beam. Slightly above threshold, the instability was found to be periodic in nature. As the intensity in the counterpropagating beam was increased far above the threshold value, wild fluctuations in the polarizations and intensities of the transmitted beams were observed. We have found that these fluctuations are chaotic and that the system evolves on a strange attractor whose dimension increases with increasing laser power. These observations are in qualitative agreement with the theoretical predictions of Gaeta et al.,1 which predict that the polarizations of counterpropagating beams in a Kerr medium are unstable to the growth of temporal fluctuations.
Pattern formation in nonlinear systems is a very active subject in many areas of physics. For example, in hydrodynamics the arrangement of the convective cells of the Rayleigh-Bernard instability [1] constitutes a model problem for pattern formation. In optics, important advances have been recently obtained in the case of lasers [2]. In contrast, transverse pattern formation in mirrorless optical passive systems [3] is no so wellknown because of the intrinsic complexity of a system without cavity and of the fact that the first experiments were done with pulsed lasers [4], We present here results obtained with c.w. lasers and rubidium atoms. In particular, we show some interesting relationship with the hydrodynamics observations.
Pattern formation in nonlinear systems is a very active subject in many areas of physics. For example, in hydrodynamics the arrangement of the convective cells of the Rayleigh-Bernard instability [1] constitutes a model problem for pattern formation. In optics, important advances have been recently obtained in the case of lasers [2]. In contrast, transverse pattern formation in mirrorless optical passive systems [3] is no so wellknown because of the intrinsic complexity of a system without cavity and of the fact that the first experiments were done with pulsed lasers [4]. We present here results obtained with c.w. lasers and rubidium atoms. In particular, the relationship with hydrodynamics observations, suggests the possible existence of some general rule for pattern formation.