Abstract

Two years ago, the first proposal and demonstration of self-focusing optical bistability was published.¹ In this paper it was shown that a self-focused beam in a nonlinear medium would exhibit hysteresis if the beam were reflected back on itself. The effect was demonstrated using a dye laser beam and Na vapor as the nonlinear medium. The optical hysteresis observed is in good qualitative agreement with a recently - published analysis of this system.² By taking account of the saturation of the nonlinearity, more complex behavior has been predicted.² This behavior is due to oscillations of the spot size as the self-focused beam propagates through the nonlinear medium. In this paper we report on our experimental studies of optical multistability due to these spot size oscillations.

© 1983 Optical Society of America