Abstract

The degeneracy of the clockwise- and counterclockwise-traveling waves in a ring laser can be eliminated by linearly coupling the two waves by means of backscattering, which leads to a frequency splitting of the normal modes. In a theoretical treatment of this effect we stress the use of a standing-wave representation. We present, in particular, numerical results for the case in which the linear coupling is not much larger than the nonlinear coupling associated with gain saturation. We report experimental evidence of frequency splitting by analyzing the optical spectrum of a bidirectional ring dye laser with backscattering. The experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions.

© 1991 Optical Society of America

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