Manuela Fe H. Tarroja

Spontaneous mode locking in long-cavity xenon lasers

Spontaneous mode locking in Fabry–Perot xenon lasers has been experimentally investigated for cavity lengths up to 66 m. Our results show dependence of the number of pulses per round-trip time on the cavity length and the excitation current. Other dynamical effects such as the ringing and modulation of the mode-locked pulses have been observed. A semiclassical model for the self-locking of an inhomogeneously broadened laser is also presented. Numerical results based on this model describe many dynamical features observed in our experiments.

Models and Approximations for Instabilities in Standing-Wave Lasers

Under a variety of conditions, xenon lasers operating at 3.51µm wavelength are observed to produce their output in the form of an infinite train of periodic or chaotic pulses, and similar behavior is observed with other laser types. In the case of xenon lasers, the pulsations are understood to result from a fundamental instability in the semiclassical laser equations, and related effects may be important with other lasers as well. Most instability modeling has been done for unidirectional ring lasers, whereas most experiments in xenon lasers have been performed for standing-wave configurations.2,3Recently a more rigorous Maxwell-Schrodinger semiclassical model was developed for describing the behavior of standing-wave Doppler-broadened lasers.4 That model provides good agreement with experimental time and frequency domain pulsation data and with Lamb dip power curves.5