Coupled longitudinal and transverse self-organization in lasers induced by transverse-mode locking

Abstract

Self-organization, resulting from the locking of two different family eigenmodes in a ${\mathrm{CO}}_{2}$ laser, is investigated in a coupled longitudinal and transverse approach. We show that within the near-field region the spatial evolution of the transverse pattern along the propagation axis involves bistability and symmetry breaking. The dynamics of prelocking, already suggesting the locked pattern to come, is also described.