Abstract

Noncontrollable parameter variations hold a prominent place among the causes of nonstationary generation of solid-state lasers. Relatively slow monotonic processes, such as the motion of reflecting surfaces and the heating and cooling of the laser rod, produce a recurrent effect on laser action. In most cases these technical fluctuations are responsible for spikes and their irregularity. The host nonlinearity of the laser rod is another poorly controllable factor. Dynamic instabilities and chaos are observed with confidence if all the random factors are excluded. This is permitted in solid-state ring lasers whose dynamics are governed by the interaction of frequency degenerate counterpropagating waves, which are the cavity modes. Thus the control parameters include the form of the atomic gain line, wave coupling coefficients and amplitude, and phase nonreciprocities of the laser cavity.

© 1988 Optical Society of America

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