Abstract

When trying to operate optically bistable systems as logical switches, one is confronted with the question of stability against noise in amplitude and frequency of the holding laser beam. It is generally accepted that this problem is governed by scaling laws which are, to a large extent, independent of the detailed description of the nonlinear medium. Therefore, we consider the case of a purely dispersive medium whose nonlinear susceptibility satisfies a Debye relaxation equation. The cavity is taken to be of moderate finesse and large bandwidth (short round-trip time).

© 1985 Optical Society of America