Abstract

We consider the process of second-harmonic generation (SHG) in a cavity that is resonant for both the fundamental- and second-harmonic modes. It has been previously shown that such a system displays a phase instability leading to self-pulsing and that one gets important intensity squeezing on both the fundamental- and second-harmonic mode for pump intensities close to but below, this instability threshold. Such a squeezing has been recently observed. We have analytically calculated the intensity-noise spectrum of the frequency-doubled field above such an instability threshold, using a semiclassical input-output technique for the treatment of quantum fluctuations.¹ Such a method, introduced to deal with fluctuations around a stable solution, has been generalized to the self-pulsing domain. As expected, the instability brings excess noise to the output beams, especially around the zero-frequency, the self-oscillation frequency, and its harmonics. Remarkably, some regions exist in which where the noise increase is small; squeezing still occurs in this frequency range far in the instability domain.

© 1990 Optical Society of America