Abstract
Optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) are devices of growing importance for several applications [1]. In the degenerate configuration OPOs permit to enhance the conversion between the pump (2ω0, SH) and the subharmonic or fundamental (ω0, FF) fields, both being close to two resonance modes of the cavity. However, cw-operating degenerate OPOs undergo different instabilities, such as bistability and self-pulsing. These instabilities, predicted in the framework of the dispersionless mean field model, give rise to hysteresis and chaotic self-pulsing, respectively [2-4]. In this communication we are aimed at showing that this scenario changes drastically as long as dispersion is included in the mean-field description. In particular dispersion allows for nonlinear phase-matching of nondegenerate processes, which results into a novel instability of the OPO steady-states, namely the build-up of sideband pairs equally detuned (say, by ±Ω) from both the FF and SH carriers. This novel mechanism is analogous to modulational instability recently predicted for cavityless parametric amplification [5]. In the OPO, however, the dissipative nature of the problem favours the stable formation of periodic patterns (i.e., pulse trains) at a repetition rate Ω. The stability analysis reveals that these periodic trains are stable at power much larger than the threshold for the competing chaotic self-pulsing, and hence constitute an intrinsic mechanism of stabilization of the OPO. Moreover the formation of periodic trains via modulational instability turns out to be a preferential mechanism even when the OPO is bistable, or, unexpectedly, even when it operates below the cw threshold for conversion to the subharmonic.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
S Trillo and M Haelterman
WL60 International Quantum Electronics Conference (IQEC) 1996
Stefano Trillo and Marc Haelterman
QThK5 Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO:FS) 1996
Zhaowei Zhang, Tobias P. Lamour, Chenglin Gu, Jinghua Sun, Chingyue Wang, Tom Gardiner, and Derryck T. Reid
CW3D.8 CLEO: Science and Innovations (CLEO:S&I) 2012