Optical bistability and first order phase transition in a ring dye laser

L. Mandeļ, Rajarshi Roy, Surendra Singh

A.V. Kuznetsov

Rajarshi Roy

The photon-number distributions for a laser with a saturable-absorber and a dye laser are obtained by extensions of the Scully and Lamb optical-maser theory. The results are shown to be in correspondence with those of Lugiato et al. for the saturable-absorber laser and with those of Schaefer and Willis for the dye laser. Moreover, they are in a form which clearly shows the relation between the saturable-absorber laser and the dye laser. The thermodynamic potentials for the first-order phase-transition analogy are calculated and are found to be of the form predicted by Scott, Sargent, and Cantrell using semiclassical equations.

C. R. Willis

Peter Jung, Peter Hänggi A

Novel colored-noise theories for optical instabilities are presented and compared with conventional approaches. In contrast to the conventional approaches, valid for small noise correlation times only, these new theories allow for a description of moderate-to-strong noise color and are of relevance particularly for the dye-laser instability and noise-dithered ring-laser gyroscopes. The theories are applied to the dye-laser instability and optical bistability. For the dye laser we evaluate the stationary probability and the integral of the stationary intensity correlation function (relaxation time), which both compare favorably with exact numerical results. For optical bistability we present the stationary probability and the switching rates.

Shangqing Gong, Shao-hua Pan, Guo-Zhen Yang

The optical bistability in a dye-ring cavity has been investigated by using the derived Maxwell-Bloch equations based on the band model. It is shown that the bistable conditions and behavior are closely related to the band structure of the dye molecules.