Abstract

We recently presented a spatio-temporal master equation (ME) model for describing the evolution of optical fields in laser cavities [1]. This ME is a paraxial wave equation with a propagation operator explicitly dependent on the ABCD elements of the cavity. It exactly reproduces the cavity mode structure in the linear case, and gives excellent agreement with the more exact Huygens’ integral method when nonlinearity is added, e.g. for laser cavities containing a Kerr lens and a gaussian aperture [1].

© 1998 IEEE