Abstract

Stability analysis of an arbitrary-finesse ring cavity containing a Kerr medium of arbitrary response time reveals an absolute minimum threshold for the driving intensity necessary for realization of self-pulsing instabilities. This threshold is minimized not only with respect to cavity mistuning but also with respect to the medium’s response time. The instability threshold is typically six times that for optical bistability.

© 1988 Optical Society of America

Optical instabilities in a nonlinear Kerr medium

Yaron Silberberg and Israel Bar-Joseph
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 1(4) 662-670 (1984)

Transverse modulational instabilities for counterpropagating beams in Kerr media

W. J. Firth and C. Paré
Opt. Lett. 13(12) 1096-1098 (1988)

Period-doubling bifurcations and modulational instability in the nonlinear ring cavity: an analytical study

M. Haelterman
Opt. Lett. 17(11) 792-794 (1992)

Instabilities and amplification of counterpropagating waves in a Kerr nonlinear medium

C. T. Law and A. E. Kaplan
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 8(1) 58-67 (1991)

Temporal modulation instabilities of counterpropagating waves in a finite dispersive Kerr medium. II. Application to Fabry–Perot cavities

M. Yu, C. J. McKinstrie, and Govind P. Agrawal
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 15(2) 617-624 (1998)