Abstract

Atomic cooperative effects in mirrorless (intrinsic) optical bistability (MOB) have been treated, so far, either by assuming a small volume with dimensions smaller than a wavelength^1,2, or by assuming a system with a small number of atoms³. In the present work we discuss MOB based upon cooperative effects among atoms in a system consisting of many two-level atoms, considering explicitly the spacial dependence of the coherent dipole-dipole interactions.

© 1985 Optical Society of America