Abstract

The plane-wave saturable homogeneously broadened ring cavity displays rich sequences of bifurcations and high-dimensional chaos when the atomic radiative lifetime ɤ^–1 is of order of magnitude or shorter than the round-trip time of the light through the cavity, τR. This delayed-feedback system exhibits low-dimensional bifurcations (periodic and quasi-periodic oscillations, intermittencies) as already analyzed and observed in ordinary nonlinear systems.

© 1988 Optical Society of America