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Physical Review A

Spontaneous light-polarization symmetry breaking for an anisotropic ring-cavity dye laser

Sergey V. Sergeyev

Published May 1, 1999• 24 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A semiclassical model of a unidirectional anisotropic ring cavity dye laser has been investigated analytically and numerically. In spite of the axial symmetry of the inversion angular distribution and the isotropy of the cavity, polarized initial fluctuations cause spontaneous light-polarization symmetry breaking in the form of alternative circularly polarized waves. Polarization symmetry is restored by increasing the orientational relaxation and pumping rates or the anisotropy of the cavity.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.59.3909

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A semiclassical model of a unidirectional anisotropic ring cavity dye laser has been investigated analytically and numerically. In spite of the axial symmetry of the inversion angular distribution and the isotropy of the cavity, polarized initial fluctuations cause spontaneous light-polarization symmetry breaking in the form of alternative circularly polarized waves. Polarization symmetry is restored by increasing the orientational relaxation and pumping rates or the anisotropy of the cavity.
Many practical laser amplifiers exhibit anisotropic gain due to polarization of the pumping fields or to a fixed preferential alignment of the active dipoles. Several specific causes and consequences of gain anisotropy are discussed in detail. In the analysis, the emphasis is placed on dye-laser systems including arbitrary amplitudes, phases, and polarizations of the pump and signal fields. Analytical results are presented for a unidrectional molecular distribution, and it is found that the polarization states of the pump and signal fields change with distance in the amplifier.
In a previous study a general semiclassical formalism has been developed for lasers with arbitrary orientational distributions of the active molecules. Here that formalism is applied to the important case of an isotropic distribution of molecules, and this limit is especially relevant to liquid dye lasers. Extensive analytical and numerical results are presented for the polarization properties of such dye lasers. It is found that in general the polarization states of the pump and signal fields are coupled together and both change with distance in a laser amplifier.
We exploit polarization self-rotation in atomic rubidium vapor to observe spontaneous symmetry breaking and bistability of polarization patterns. We pump the vapor cell with horizontally polarized light while the vertical polarization, which is initially in the vacuum state, is resonated in a ring cavity. Vacuum fluctuations in this mode experience cumulative gain due to the compound action of amplification due to the self-rotation and feedback through the resonator, eventually acquiring a macroscopic magnitude akin to an optical parametric oscillator. The randomness of these fluctuations results in a bistable, random macroscopic polarization pattern at the output. We propose utilizing this mechanism to simulate Ising-like interaction between multiple spatial modes and as a basis for a fully optical coherent Ising machine.
We exploit polarization self-rotation (PSR) in atomic rubidium vapor to observe spontaneous symmetry breaking and bistability of polarization patterns. We pump the vapor cell with horizontally polarized light while the vertical polarization, which is initially in the vacuum state, is resonated in a ring cavity. Microscopic field fluctuations in this mode experience cumulative gain due to the compound action of amplification due to the self-rotation and feedback through the resonator, eventually acquiring a macroscopic magnitude akin to an optical parametric oscillator. The randomness of these fluctuations results in a bistable, random macroscopic polarization pattern at the output. We propose utilizing this mechanism to simulate an Ising-like interaction between multiple spatial modes and as a basis for a fully optical coherent Ising machine (CIM).
Abstract On the basis of numerical solution to the Maxwell–Bloch equations within the one-dimensional two-level model of a superradiant laser with a symmetric cavity in which the photon lifetime is less than the incoherent relaxation time of the optical-dipole oscillations of active centers, the phenomenon of the spontaneous asymmetric generation of counter-propagating waves under continuous uniform pumping of the active medium is revealed. It is shown that the observed symmetry breaking of the spatial profiles of counter-propagating waves of the electromagnetic field and, the polarization and inversion of the population of active-medium levels in the case of a small inhomogeneous broadening of the spectral line of its working transition occurs due to the asymmetric half-wave nonlinear grating of inversion of the energy-level population produced by these waves.