Two-photon Transition In Rubidium Research Articles

Transients in optical bistability

In this paper we report on both a theoretical model for the transients in optical bistability in a Fabry-Perot cavity and the corresponding experimental results. An analytical calculation permits to predict the shape of the transient curves and the order of magnitude of their time duration in the case of a slow sweep of the length of the cavity. The experiment, which uses the nonlinearity arising from a two-photon transition in rubidium, yields results in good agreement with the theoretical calculation.