Abstract

A single-mode N₂O laser with NH₃ as a saturable absorber is found to exhibit chaotic passive Q switching with multipeaked pulses. The chaotic dynamics is strongly correlated with vibrational relaxation mechanism in the laser medium. The phenomenon is predicted, and its characteristic behavior is well explained, by the rate-equation analysis recently developed for the case of instability in CO₂ lasers.

© 1989 Optical Society of America

Passive Q-switching instability and bistability of a N₂O laser with intracavity saturable absorber

Feng-Lei Hong, Maki Tachikawa, Bo-Feng Li, and Tadao Shimizu
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 5(11) 2315-2321 (1988)

Laser instability and chaotic pulsation in a CO₂ laser with intracavity saturable absorber

Maki Tachikawa, Kazuhito Tanii, and Tadao Shimizu
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 5(5) 1077-1082 (1988)

Observation of instabilities in hot-band oscillation of a CO₂ laser with a saturable absorber

Feng-Lei Hong, Maki Tachikawa, and Tadao Shimizu
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 9(8) 1305-1311 (1992)

Instability in a CO₂ sequence-band laser with a saturable absorber and vibration-to-vibration energy transfer processes

Toshiki Sugawara, Feng-Lei Hong, Maki Tachikawa, and Tadao Shimizu
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 10(2) 265-270 (1993)

Instabilities and chaos in an infrared laser with saturable absorber: experiments and vibrorotational model

Ferdinando de Tomasi, Daniel Hennequin, Bruno Zambon, and Ennio Arimondo
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6(1) 45-57 (1989)