Abstract

The first observation the phenomenon of an amplified optical bistability arising in an active Fabry-Perot interferometer containing saturated amplifying and absorbing media and excited by an external coherent field was reported in [1]. Such bistability is characterized by large hysteresis and sharp amplification of the external signal and considerable improvement of quality factor Q of the interferometer to a value of the order of 1/A (here A is the ratio of the saturation parameters in amplifying and absorbing media). A number of new lasing regimes and differential gain are observed as well.

© 1998 IEEE