Abstract

Modeling an ordinary laser or a driven optical system in the presence of counterpropagating waves presents additional complications that are absent in a unidirectional resonator. The most obvious difficulty stems from interference of the counterpropagating waves and the appearance of a high-frequency spatial structure that overlaps the slower variations of the field and the atomic variables. The most significant theoretical advances in this area have been obtained with the help of various approximations, such as the single-mode assumption,¹ the uniform field approximation,² the dispersive limit,³ and others.

© 1987 Optical Society of America