Abstract
The generation of spatial rogue waves, or "hot spots," is demonstrated experimentally in the passively Q-switched Nd:YAG laser system operating in a low-power regime well below the self-focusing limit. Here, we report the dependence of rogue wave statistics on the number of transverse modes that interact in the laser cavity. Our observations show that spatial rogue waves are most likely to occur when the laser exhibits complex output beam configurations that are formed by a large number of interacting high-order transverse modes. These results confirm the hypothesis that one of the main factors affecting the emergence of spatial rogue waves in solid-state lasers is the number of laser transverse modes.
Highlights
Investigations were mostly focused on the study of temporal rogue waves (RWs) that represent pulses with extremely high intensities relative to the typical intensities in a pulse time train
The spatiotemporal dynamics of optical pulses have been demonstrated in multimode fibers, and mode-locked fiber lasers
It was conjectured that such hot spots emerge due to the spontaneous coupling of transverse and/or longitudinal laser modes which leads to further breakup of the laser beam under nonlinear effects of filamentation and catastrophic self-focusing that are especially pronounced in high-power lasers [31, 33, 34]
Summary
Experimental demonstration of spatial rogue waves in the passively Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. There exists a purely spatial (and spatiotemporal) manifestation of the RW phenomenon known as "hot spots" that correspond to tightly focused spots in the transverse crosssection of the beam with peak intensities much higher than the average beam intensity This phenomenon has been known in laser physics for many years – long before the discovery of rogue waves in optical fiber geometry [31]. Despite years of research the main factors thought to be affecting the emergence of the hot spots remain elusive It is well-established fact that nonlinearity is not strictly necessary to observe the enhanced probability of occurrence of a RW and the heavy-tail statistics of wave intensity distribution have been reported in purely linear systems [35, 36]. Our experimental setup represents a passively Q-switched Nd:YAG laser - see Fig.
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