Abstract
One of the unexpected features of early laser systems was the emergence of output pulsations even under steady (or nearly steady) pumping conditions [1]. Actually, spiking was observed in some masers [2] even before the discovery of their optical counterparts, but it became a virtually universal feature of solid state optical devices [3]. It did not take long before this surprising result was recognized as an important aspect of laser phenomenology. In fact, proposals linking the output pulsations to the emergence of dynamical instabilities appeared even in the very early literature on this subject [4]. To be sure, significant discrepancies existed between the experimental and calculated thresholds for unstable behavior, but this did not appear to be a point of serious concern until much later when, guided by a wealth of new insights about dynamical systems and especially because of the discovery [5] and analytic description [6] of optical bistability, the field of laser instabilities acquired a physiognomy of its own.
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References
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In discussing the various modal configurations that are accessible to an ordinary Fabry-Perot laser many textbooks emphasize that it is much more difficult to sustain oscillations in the axially-symmetric Gauss-Laguerre modes than in their non-symmetric Gauss-Hermite counterparts. See, for example A.E. Siegman, An Introduction to Lasers and Masers. (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1971).
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Lugiato, L.A., Narducci, L.M., Bandy, D.K., Tredicce, J.R., Ru, P. (1987). Recent Advances in Laser Instabilities. In: Graham, R., Wunderlin, A. (eds) Lasers and Synergetics. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 19. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-72758-0_3
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