V Fluctuations, Instabilities and Chaos in the Laser-Driven Nonlinear Ring Cavity

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter explains fluctuations, instabilities, and chaos in the laser-driven nonlinear ring cavity. The laser-like systems of modern optics exhibit many of these properties in an especially uncluttered setting, where their essential features are not hidden by irrelevant complexity. This fact, has gained prominence with the recent appearance of new theoretical results for several such systems. Among these are the driven nonlinear cavity and the laser with saturable absorber, which exhibit hysteresis and other properties analogous to those of first-order phase transitions. In particular, the ring cavity with a nonlinear medium shows the universal approach to chaotic behavior as a mechanism for optical chaos. The chapter presents the stationary response of the nonlinear ring cavity to an injected field utilizing the Maxwell–Bloch equations for a medium of two-level atoms. In addition, the chapter discusses time-dependent behavior of the nonlinear ring cavity. It describes the deterministic switching in the bistable region utilizing the Maxwell–Bloch equations. Further, the chapter explains the sequence of instabilities present in the nonlinear ring cavity with fast transverse relaxation.