Models and Approximations for Instabilities in Standing-Wave Lasers

Abstract

Under a variety of conditions, xenon lasers operating at 3.51µm wavelength are observed to produce their output in the form of an infinite train of periodic or chaotic pulses, and similar behavior is observed with other laser types. In the case of xenon lasers, the pulsations are understood to result from a fundamental instability in the semiclassical laser equations, and related effects may be important with other lasers as well. Most instability modeling has been done for unidirectional ring lasers, whereas most experiments in xenon lasers have been performed for standing-wave configurations._2,3Recently a more rigorous Maxwell-Schrodinger semiclassical model was developed for describing the behavior of standing-wave Doppler-broadened lasers.₄ That model provides good agreement with experimental time and frequency domain pulsation data and with Lamb dip power curves.⁵