Abstract

Intrinsic (mirrorless) optical bistability (MOB) has been predicted independently by a number of authors¹. Recent experiments have demonstrated at least one major aspect of this phenomenon, i.e., MOB due to increasing absorption². Other categories of MOB which have been predicted from theoretical models are caused by: interatomic correlation in a many-body quantum model, the anharmonic contribution in a classical Duffing oscillator, the local field correction in the macroscopic Maxwell-Bloch formulation, and coherent dipole-dipole interaction in a microscopic semiclassical model of a finite number of damped, two-level atoms driven by an external field³. All of these models share a single common characteristic which causes MOB in some region of the parameter space of each model. The characteristic is simply: an interaction-dependent nonlinearity which causes a renormalization of the resonance frequency. In each case, the sign and magnitude of the incident field detuning from the unrenormalized resonance is a crucial parameter.

© 1985 Optical Society of America