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Physical Review Letters

Differential Gain and Bistability Using a Sodium-Filled Fabry-Perot Interferometer

H. M. Gibbs, S. L. McCall, Thirumalai Venkatesan

Published May 10, 1976• 899 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Differential gain and large hysteresis have been seen in the transmission of a Fabry-Perot interferometer containing Na vapor irradiated by light from a cw dye laser. Non-linear dispersion, neglected in earlier work, dominates over nonlinear absorption in Na. The apparatus uses only optical inputs and outputs. Similar apparatus may be useful as an optical amplifier, memory element, clipper, and limiter.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.36.1135

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IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Annual Meeting (LEOS)•Dec 30, 2002•4 citations
Differential gain and large hysteresis have been seen in the transmission of a Fabry-Perot interferometer containing Na vapor irradiated by light from a cw dye laser. Non-linear dispersion, neglected in earlier work, dominates over nonlinear absorption in Na. The apparatus uses only optical inputs and outputs. Similar apparatus may be useful as an optical amplifier, memory element, clipper, and limiter.
Optical tristability via optical pumping has been observed in the transmission of a Fabry-Perot interferometer containing Na vapor irradiated by light from a cw dye laser on the high-frequency wing of the D1{D}_{1}D1​ line. For linearly polarized incident light, three stable states appear in the polarization of the transmitted light: ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{+}$ dominant, ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{\ensuremath{-}}$ dominant, and linear polarization.
Some years ago, a number of people independently suggested the use of the saturable absorber to induce optical bistability (hereafter referred to as OB). The phenomenon was demonstrated and studied recently by Gibbs, McCall and Venkatesan who used a cw dye laser to excite atoms of sodium vapor in a cell between the plates of a Fabry Perot interferometer. Under certain experimental and material conditions, they observed a nonlinear dependency of the transmitted field as a function of the dye-laser input which exhibited hysteresis, differential gain, and bistable behavior. Interest in OB from the practical applications standpoint stems from obvious device applications as the optical analog of the transistor, optical clipper or limiter and digital optical memory element. The recent demonstration of the phenomenon has generated considerable interest from the fundamental point of view as a clear example of spontaneous ordering in an open, stationary system of matter interacting with light. This has led to a surge of recent theoretical activity. (Author)
Bistability, differential gain, discriminator, clipper, and limier actions were observed using a plano-concave Fabry-Perot cavity containing ruby. Input powers were approximately 20 mW from a cw ruby laser. Operation wa anticipated near 77 °K where the R1 transition was nearly resonant with the laser. However, the device functioned at room temperature. The refractive index of ruby depends on the fractional ground-state population. Driving the R lines leads to a nonlinear refractive index due to dispersive contributions from nonresonant pump and charge-transfer bands, which explains the room-temperature operation.
When the output parameter of an optical device could be a multivalued function of the input parameter, this device can be working in an optical bistable status. The most typical optical bistable device is a Fabry–Perot cavity containing a nonlinear optical medium, the refractive index of which depends on the light intensity. Upon the action of an intense input optical beam, the transmitted (or reflected) intensity of this device may exhibit a nonlinear response to the incident light intensity variation and, especially under appropriate working conditions, the characteristic output/input curve may manifest a single (or multiple) hysteresis loop(s). Such type of optical bistable device can be used as an optical differential amplifier, optical switch, optical limiter, optical clipper, optical discriminator, or an optical memory element, depending on the chosen nonlinear medium and operation conditions.
We report on the observation of critical slowing down and of self-pulsing in a Fabry-Perot resonator (FP) filled with sodium atoms under conditions of transverse optical pumping /1/. The experimental set-up (see Fig.1) is similar to the one used in steady-state bistability studies reported before /2/. The dye laser, optically isolated from the FP by means of a Faraday rotator (FR) is detuned from the Na D1-line by 10 to 20 GHz. The sodium sample (N ≃ 1013 cm–3, buffer gas: argon, p=200 mbar) is placed in a near confocal Fabry-Perot (Beam waist: 1 20 μm) and can be subjected to a transverse magnetic field B. The intensity of the laser beam can be switched by means of an electro-optic modulator(EOM), thus providing input-steps of variable height (power:5 – 50 mW). A polarizer P1 is used to either circularly or linearly polarize the input beam. The right– and left circular polarization components of the resonator output beam can be separated by means of a λ/4-plate and a polarizing beam splitter P2. A pair of photodiodes PDi is used for detection.
Laser diode amplifiers exhibit optical bistability when biased just below lasing threshold, and have applications as optical memory elements and optical switches, due to their very low switching energy (fJ) and presence of optical gain. While LDAs operated in transmission have received much attention, the reflection mode of operation has been largely neglected. In this paper we present a detailed experimental and numerical investigation of Fabry Perot LDA (FP-LDA) behavior under light injection when operated in reflection. We observe transitions from anticlockwise to clockwise hysteresis with changing bias level or incident wavelength detuning. Moreover, we also report the first experimental observation of X-shaped (or butterfly hysteresis) in this system. Our results are in very good agreement with calculation.>