Abstract

It has been believed that class-B lasers, in which polarization dynamics can be adiabatically eliminated, do not exhibit dynamical instability unless additional degrees of freedom are introduced in the form of modulations, saturable absorbers, light injections, external feedback, and so forth. Recently, however, self-induced instability has been demonstrated in multimode class-B lasers resulting from their inherent nonlinearities [1,2]. In this paper, we demonstrate large-amplitude chaotic relaxation oscillations in a laser-diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser operating in a double-transition oscillation scheme.

© 2000 IEEE