Abstract

The neighborhood of the first laser threshold is studied when the pump parameter is swept slowly in time and in the presence of noise. The good cavity limit approximation is taken. The study is performed in the spirit of the bifurcation theory approach, the equation being taken first order in a linear stability analysis.¹ The noise is added in a phenomenological way, and two kinds of noise are considered, additive noise and multiplicative noise, depending on the physical origin of the noise. The purpose of our calculation is to determine the actual position of the laser first threshold which can be significantly different from the static noiseless threshold. The effect of the different parameters of the system, such as the sweeping rate, the initial position of the sweep, the intensity and color of the noise, and the threshold condition, is investigated. This analytic investigation determines the relevant combination of parameters and leads to comparison with previous analog and numerical analysis.^2,3

© 1988 Optical Society of America