Self oscillations of a bistable element in two coupled hybrid ring resonators

Abstract

A CdS crystal showing thermally induced optical bistability is incorporated into two coupled hybrid ring resonators with different delay times. Both delay times are much longer than the relaxation time of the nonlinearity. The resulting self-oscillations are investigated both experimentally and theoretically. We find two different types of oscillation modes. If the crystal is on the lower branch of the bistability during the longer delay time, step like oscillations similar to the case of a single resonator occur. If the crystal is in the lower state onlh for the shorter delay time (also the shorter of the two delay times is much longer than the relaxation time) we find more complicated modes with plateaus and stairs because the long resonator acts as a memory for the system state before the switching process. We find complex mode locking structures exhibiting Farey-tree like transitions between different oscillation modes as well as mode coexistence. Based on an adiabatic theory we compute the regions of extstence of the different oscillation modes and compare them with experimental results.