Abstract

The dynamical behavior of a Raman ring laser is investigated in the plane-wave limit. Assuming that the polarizability adiabatically follows the fields and that the molecular ground state remains undepleted, we obtain a discrete mapping for the pump and Stokes field amplitudes. We find that, when the two injected fields are sufficiently detuned from the Raman transition, the transmitted fields can become chaotic. Additionally, when the injected fields are of comparable magnitudes, hyperchaos—characterized by two positive Lyapunov exponents—is observed. This system thus represents an alternative for observing "bad-cavity" optical chaos indicated for nonlinear interferometers filled with two-level atoms¹, ² but not so far observed in purely optical systems. We compare the Lyapunov and correlation dimensions in the chaotic regime. Finally, we relax the assumption of adiabatic following to show the importance of the molecular dynamics in determining the characteristics of the chaotic field oscillations.

© 1992 Optical Society of America