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Annual Meeting Optical Society of America

Anomalous bistable behavior of a dye laser

E. C. Gage, F. C. Cheng, L. Mandeļ

Published Jan 1, 1989• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An anomalous form of bistability and hysteresis has been observed in a dye laser at low excitation, when for a given pump power the dye laser may be either on or off. The dye laser exhibits a memory. It is found that if the pump beam is briefly interrupted the dye laser returns to the original on or off branch of the hysteresis cycle, but if the dye laser beam is interrupted, the laser always remains off. Ancillary experiments suggest that a multilayer mirror is responsible.

DOI
10.1364/oam.1989.thcc1

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An anomalous form of bistability and hysteresis has been observed in a dye laser at low excitation, when for a given pump power the dye laser may be either on or off. The dye laser exhibits a memory. It is found that if the pump beam is briefly interrupted the dye laser returns to the original on or off branch of the hysteresis cycle, but if the dye laser beam is interrupted, the laser always remains off. Ancillary experiments suggest that a multilayer mirror is responsible.
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We present experimental measurements of bistable characteristics for the case of a 1.55-/spl mu/m symmetric Fabry-Perot laser amplifier with a particularly rich variety of behavior for reflected signals. Three main forms of hysteresis loops are observed on reflection. The hysteresis loop changes from anticlockwise to clockwise hysteresis in the optical output-input characteristic when the drive current or initial phase detuning is changed. A "butterfly" hysteresis loop is observed experimentally at an optical input power as low as 300 /spl mu/W for a drive current equal to 94% of the lasing threshold. The dependence of the reflective optical bistability on drive current, initial phase detuning, and injected optical pewter has been investigated for the first time in an uncoated 1.55-/spl mu/m amplifier. Measurements of the device voltage shifts on switching reveal hysteresis loops which match those in the corresponding optical powers and which indicate the amount of gain saturation and nonlinear refraction responsible for bistability. An analytical model is used to describe the observed reflective bistability and to give insight into the detailed physical mechanisms responsible.
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