Weak versus strong harmonic-expansion analyses of self-pulsing lasers: II—the inhomogeneously broadened system

Abstract

A simple harmonic expansion method is applied to investigate some aspects of the dynamic properties of the integro-differential ‘Maxwell-Bloch’ equations that describe the self-pulsing regime of a single-mode inhomogeneously broadened laser. First, we show that the usual small perturbative methods only describe the transient relaxation oscillations, characteristic of the signal relaxing towards its permanent state, either stable or unstable. Second, we show that an adapted strong harmonic expansion analysis applied to the permanent pulsing solutions yields an accurate evaluation of the pulsing frequencies.