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Physical Review A

Effect of laser amplitude and phase fluctuations on optical bistability

C. R. Willis

Published Feb 1, 1984• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A generalized Fokker-Planck equation is derived for a system undergoing optical bistability when the dominant source of fluctuations is due to fluctuations in the incident field rather than spontaneous emission. The fluctuations are treated as a time-dependent Gaussian process whose properties are determined by the individual laser's characteristics. Both amplitude and phase fluctuations are included on the incident laser field. The effect of fluctuations of the incident laser on optical bistability are different for amplitude and phase fluctuations and are different for absorptive and dispersive optical bistability. The combination of incident laser phase fluctuations and dispersive optical bistability leads to large amplitude fluctuations near the turning points of the optical bistability curve and causes the system to make a transition from one branch of the optical bistability curve to the other before reaching the mean-field turning points. We take the high-$Q$ cavity limit of our generalized Fokker-Planck equation, solve the linearized equations, and provide criteria for the magnitude of fluctuations in optical bistability in terms of laser and cavity parameters. The magnitude of incident laser fluctuations are typically orders of magnitude larger than fluctuations due to spontaneous emission and are therefore important for practical applications of optical bistability devices.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.29.774

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Physical Review A•Oct 1, 1980•13 citations
A generalized Fokker-Planck equation is derived for a system undergoing optical bistability when the dominant source of fluctuations is due to fluctuations in the incident field rather than spontaneous emission. The fluctuations are treated as a time-dependent Gaussian process whose properties are determined by the individual laser's characteristics. Both amplitude and phase fluctuations are included on the incident laser field. The effect of fluctuations of the incident laser on optical bistability are different for amplitude and phase fluctuations and are different for absorptive and dispersive optical bistability. The combination of incident laser phase fluctuations and dispersive optical bistability leads to large amplitude fluctuations near the turning points of the optical bistability curve and causes the system to make a transition from one branch of the optical bistability curve to the other before reaching the mean-field turning points. We take the high-QQQ cavity limit of our generalized Fokker-Planck equation, solve the linearized equations, and provide criteria for the magnitude of fluctuations in optical bistability in terms of laser and cavity parameters. The magnitude of incident laser fluctuations are typically orders of magnitude larger than fluctuations due to spontaneous emission and are therefore important for practical applications of optical bistability devices.
We derive and analyze the master equation for absorptive and dispersive optical bistability in the high-Q cavity limit where the driving laser has both amplitude and phase fluctuations which are larger than the small amplitude and phase fluctuations caused by incoherent spontaneous emission in the cavity. We treat the amplitude and phase fluctuations of the driving laser as independent time dependent Gaussian processes. The causes of jitter and amplitude fluctuations will vary from laser to laser and the fluctuations need not be Gaussian. However, we use Gaussian processes for mathematical tractability and because we expect them to be qualitatively correct. Recently,1 we have shown in the case of absorptive optical bistability when the driving laser has phase fluctuations the fundamental process which determines the statistical properties of the internal field is the competition between locking of the internal field phase to the phase of the driving laser and the diffusion of the phase of the internal field as a consequence of the driving laser fluctuations. The driving laser fluctuations have little effect if the phase locking rate is larger than the phase diffusion rate caused by the driving laser’s fluctuations. However, when the diffusion rate becomes comparable to the locking rate we find the amplitude of the 2 internal field is reduced and the dimensionless parameter2 measuring the importance of transitions from one branch of the OB curve to the other due to fluctuations takes on a value which leads to an appreciable transition rate due to fluctuations.
We derive, solve, and analyze the linearized master equation and evaluate the spectrum for absorptive optical bistability in the high-QQQ cavity when the incident laser has jitter or frequency fluctuation. The fluctuations are treated as a time-dependent Gaussian process whose properties are determined by the individual laser's characteristics. With our results we can explain the qualitative results of machine simulations and provide criteria for the magnitude of fluctuations in optical bistability in terms of laser and cavity parameters.
In this paper we discuss the influence of laser fluctuations on the hysteresis cycle in Optical Bistability. For the simplest case of an Absorptive Optical Bistability in a good cavity driven by an external laser light with non-white Gaussian amplitude fluctuations we derive a Fokker-Planck equation in the limit of large laser linewidth and good amplitude stabilization. This Fokker-Planck equation has a nonconstant diffusion term which shifts the most probable values of the steady state probability distribution from its deterministic positions. From the form of the steady state solution of the Fokker-Planck equation with non-white amplitude fluctuations we discuss the relative stability of the bistable branches. As in the case of quantum fluctuations the random amplitude of the laser field leads to a small range of values of the injected laser intensity in which the two bistable peaks have a comparable area. The transmitted field averaged with respect to the stationary distribution function coincides with one of the two deterministic branches except on the narrow transition region where we have large fluctuations.
We formulate a running wave, singlemode model for purely dispersive optical bistability, which incorporates amplitude and frequency fluctuations in the incident field, cavity length fluctuations, thermal noise in the radiation field and in the material (1). This model is given by a set of three Langevin-type equations for the real and the imaginary part of the slowly-varying electric field, and for the material variable. In the white noise limit, it is equivalent to a Fokker-Planck equation in three variables. Even if our model can describe also a Kerr medium or a two-level system in a suitable range of parameters, we are mainly interested in the case of miniaturized all–optical bistable devices which utilize semiconductor dispersive media. In this situation, we can adiabatically eliminate the field variables and therefore reduce the problem to a single stochastic differential equation in one variable, which contains several terms of additive and multiplicative noise. We find that noise in the imaginary part of the slowly varying electric field does not contribute to this equation. In the white, -noise case, our stochastic equation is equivalent to a Fokker-Planck equation in one variable, whereas in the case of colored noise we obtain a onedimensional Fokker-Planck equation only in the limit of short correlation times.
On the basis of the absorptive bistability model, including the fluctuations, we rederive in the good-cavity limit the Fokker-Planck equation describing the time evolution of the quasiprobability distribution for the transmitted field amplitude. It is shown that on a semiclassical level different variants of the Fokker-Planck equation are possible. The equation of Bonifacio, Gronchi, and Lugiato is solved in terms of a path integral which involves a generalized Wiener measure. In order to calculate the averages of transmitted field moments as functions of time, a Monte Carlo integration scheme is used. This scheme consists in constructing random trajectories which result from the Langevin equation statistically equivalent to the derived Fokker-Planck equation. Numerical results in the bistable domain are presented for large values of the fluctuation parameter.