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Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference

Observation of dynamical laser-light patterns in sodium vapor

R. Holzrter, S. Dangel, B. Röhricht, H. Schmid, U. Rusch, R. R. Richard, Patrik Eschle

Published May 22, 1995• 0 citations
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Abstract

We investigate experimentally several dynamical effects as they occur when one or two polarized resonant laser beams of a few milliwatts of power and about a 100-µm beam waist penetrate a glass cell filled with sodium vapor of 3 × 1018 m-3 density and 250 Torr of argon buffer gas.

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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.
Circularly polarized laser beams propagating through sodium vapor and tuned to the buffer gas broadened atomic D1 transition can optically pump sodium atoms into a nonabsorbing groundstate. The corresponding groundstate populations depend on the intensity distribution, the polarization and the magnetic fields. They lead to refractive index gradients along as well as transverse to the laser beam propagation direction and therefore modify the light path giving rise to a number of nonlinear spatiotemporal intensity and polarization pattern creating processes.
The interaction of left- and right-hand circularly polarized narrow-band cw laser beams that copropagate through sodium vapor and are tuned to the homogeneously broadened D1 transition can lead to the mutual extinction of both beams. Such beam switching is caused by an intensity- and polarization-dependent refractive index due to optical pumping even at low intensities. The dynamics of beam switching is investigated experimentally and explained qualitatively by the conventional J = 1/2 to J = 1/2 transition model. The accurate quantitative description, however, is only achieved by an extended model comprising hyperfine ground states in spite of homogeneous line broadening by argon buffer gas, which is larger than the hyperfine splitting.
Polarization rotation effects in atomic sodium vapor are studied both experimentally and theoretically. Two pulsed dye laser beams propagate collinearly through a cell containing sodium vapor. The direction of polarization of a linearly polarized dye laser beam of frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{1}$ is found to be rotated by a circularly polarized beam of frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{2}$. This rotation is due to the difference in refractive index at ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{1}$ for right and left circularly polarized light which is produced by the circularly polarized beam. When ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{1}+{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{2}$ is tuned near the $3S\ensuremath{-}5S$ two-photon transition of atomic sodium, this difference is primarily due to the dispersion associated with the two-photon transition. Other sources of polarization rotation which were identified include (i) real transfers of population to excited atomic levels due to collisionally induced transitions and (ii) optically induced atomic energy-level shifts. The theory includes both the effects of two-photon dispersion and optically induced energy shifts. The application of the two-photon polarization rotation effect as a fast, optically controlled shutter or modulator and as a sensitive detection technique for two-photon spectroscopy are briefly discussed.
We report steady-state self-focusing, self-trapping, and self-defocusing of a cw dye laser beam in sodium vapor for frequencies within several Doppler widths of the DDD-line resonance transitions. We measured the variation of the beam profile as the light propagates through the vapor. We observed a 20-mW beam self-trapped in a 12-cm-long filament having a half-power diameter of 70 \ensuremath{\mu}m.
We report steady-state self-focusing, self-trapping, and self-defocusing of a cw dye laser beam in sodium vapor for frequencies within several Doppler widths of the DDD-line resonance transitions. We measured the variation of the beam profile as the light propagates through the vapor. We observed a 20-mW beam self-trapped in a 12-cm-long filament having a half-power diameter of 70 \ensuremath{\mu}m.