Abstract

When the working point of a laser is taken through its threshold of oscillation, the optical field undergoes an order-disorder type of phase transition, which is manifest in the statistics of the emitted light photons, and has been studied experimentally by photoelectric counting and correlation measurements. In a single-mode laser the phase transition is usually of the second order and continuous, but it can become discontinuous in the presence of pumping fluctuations and in multimode lasers, which also can exhibit deterministic chaos. Some lasers, like the two-mode dye ring laser, exhibit metabistability and mode switching under the influence of quantum fluctuations. These phenomena will be reviewed.

© 1986 Optical Society of America