Abstract

If the intracavity medium of a nonlinear optical resonator consists of a beam of atoms that cross the waist of the resonator’s fundamental mode in a time less than or comparable to a spontaneous lifetime, transit broadening will contribute to the absorption linewidth. Under the same conditions, the resonator may exhibit multistability. In the simplest case, this can be understood as resulting from a variation in absorption with intracavity intensity; the absorption is minimized when a transiting atom is carried through an integral number of Rabi cycles and is maximized if the number of cycles is half-integral. This simplest model, however, assumes that (1) the transit time is much less than the lifetime; (2) the transverse mode has a Gaussian variation only in the direction of atomic motion; and (3) the atomic beam is monoenergetic. The multistability can persist even when these three simplifying assumptions are relaxed; the effects, on the input-output characteristics, of relaxing these assumptions will be reported. Possible experiments and applications will be discussed.

© 1992 Optical Society of America