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Annual Meeting Optical Society of America

Near threshold buildup times of individual modes in a multimode short-cavity dye laser

Steven E. Hodges, W. Gadomski, M. G. Raymer

Published Jan 1, 1991• 0 citations

Abstract

A short-cavity dye laser has been constructed to study fluctuations arising from quantum noise and mode coupling in multimode systems. Typical dye lasers (i.e., long-cavity) have been found to have cw dynamics that are dominated by coherent wave mixing effects.1 The quantum noise in these lasers also manifests itself as a variance in the buildup times of the laser light intensity. Buildup times of singlemode long-cavity lasers have been studied.2 The relative importance of quantum noise is enhanced in short cavities making the turn-on transient the dominant feature in the laser light fluctuations. We have measured the turn-on transient of individual modes from a multimode short-cavity dye laser following sudden turn-on of the pump power. The shortness of the cavity has the effect of making the decay times of the intracavity field and the molecular population similar. The observed buildup and rise times are compared with those predicted by a semiclassical multimode laser theory with stochastic noise added for several pump rates. Moreover, semiregular oscillations of the total intensity have been observed to occur in short bursts separating intervals of nearly constant cw laser output.

DOI: 10.1364/oam.1991.thmm30

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A stochastic, semiclassical model is developed for a multimode, homogeneously broadened laser with rapid dipole dephasing, appropriate for semiconductor, Ti:sapphire, or dye lasers. The theory self-consistently incorporates population dynamics including temporal beating effects and relaxation oscillations, spatial hole burning, coherent-wave mixing, and quantum noise. The model is valid for single- and compound-cavity lasers in which the mode frequencies are well defined. We pay particular attention to finding a useful mode basis in the case that the gain medium does not completely fill the cavity. This situation can lead to coupled-cavity effects. For typical systems the model is valid for pump rates up to several times threshold and is tractable for numerical simulations. The theoretical development described in this paper is applied to an experimental system in a companion paper (J. Opt. Soc. Am. B14, 180 (1997)].

A stochastic, semiclassical model is developed for a multimode, homogeneously broadened laser with rapid-dipole dephasing (e.g., semiconductor or dye lasers). The theory is valid for systems with a free spectral range that is large compared to the decay rates of the population inversion and the field. Population dynamics including temporal beating effects and relaxation oscillations, spatial-hole burning, coherent-wave mixing, and quantum noise are all included self consistently. A principal restriction of the model, when applied to coupled-cavity systems, is that the modes satisfying the boundary conditions of the gain medium must form a subset of the modes defined by the cavity and that only modes in this subset are above threshold. For typical systems, the model is valid for pump rates up to several times threshold. The effects on the emission linewidth of coherent-wave mixing and the number of modes included in the simulation at various pump rates are discussed.

The spectral and temporal dynamics of a multimode dye laser has been studied theoretically and experimentally. The analytical model includes quantum fluctuations as well as four-wave mixingdue to population pulsations, stimulated Brillouin scattering, and Rayleigh scattering both in a standing-wave linear laser, and in a unidirectional ring laser. The nonlinearity found most important in the multimode dye laser is four-wave mixing due to pulsations of the populationof the upper laser level. Numerical simulations show features that characterize this particular type of mode coupling: broadening of the emission spectrum, oscillations of the light flux in individual laser modes, suppression of certain beat notes. Observations of these features confirm population pulsations dominating the laser dynamics. Four-wave mixing due to population pulsations tends to arrange the phases of the laser modes such as to minimize the pulsations and to limit its own strength.

A model using rate equations which allow for quantum noise is used to make a theoretical analysis of the steady-state lasing regime of a cw dye laser. Equations describing the laser performance are derived in the adiabatic approximation neglecting spatial inhomogeneities in the burnup of the active medium. An investigation is made of the stability of steady-state multimode laser action and it is found that this is weak in certain modes. Calculations are made of correlation functions describing fluctuations in the numbers of photons in the modes and fluctuations in the total intensity. Although the fluctuations in individual modes are large, the integrated intensity fluctuates negligibly. An analysis is made of the influence of quantum intensity fluctuations on the attainment of maximum sensitivity in intracavity laser spectroscopy.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering in the dye jet inside a linear laser cavity has been investigated and found to be of significant importance for the dynamical behavior of multimode cw dye lasers. At high spectral power densities, it is responsible for a strong coupling of thousands of individual modes into a few mode packets, thus drastically reducing the number of actually existing degrees of freedom of the system. For a decreasing spectral power density, the mode-coupling strength due to stimulated Brillouin scattering lowers, accompanied by an increase of the number of mode packets. At low spectral power densities, additional mode-coupling mechanisms are supposed to account for a stepwise reduction of the number of independently oscillating mode packets. As an interesting application, the spectroscopic technique of intracavity optical-optical double resonance is discussed and demonstrated.

Recent theoretical analyses of the single-mode laser with colored-noise pump fluctuations have allowed the detailed prediction of the short-time behavior of the intensity autocorrelations of such a laser. In particular, a rounding off of the intensity correlation function on the time scale of the correlation time of the pump fluctuations has been predicted. We present results from experiments performed on a single-mode dye-laser system that clearly confirm these predictions. Numerical simulations of the laser Langevin equations including the colored-noise pump fluctuations are used to fit the experimental results.