Some physical scenes (melting, freezing and localization) from a birthplace of light pulses (mode-locked lasers)

Author

Fischer, Baruch ; Cordon, A. ; Vodonos, Boris

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Technion-Israel Inst. of Technol., Haifa, Israel

fYear

2003

fDate

22-27 June 2003

Firstpage

22

Abstract

The process of pulse generation in mode-locked lasers is studied using a statistical mechanics approach that is built to deal with many interacting modes in the cavity. Experimental observations verify the order-disorder phase transition nature, with its "latent heat", as the noise ("temperature") is varied. The freezing-melting experimental behavior is measured in the light-wave time domain, and also by the order parameter of the system. The localization behavior of mode-locked lasers is also discussed via active mode-locking.

Keywords

freezing; laser cavity resonators; laser mode locking; laser modes; latent heat; melting; optical pulse generation; order-disorder transformations; active mode-locking; freezing; interacting modes; laser cavity; latent heat; light pulses; light-wave time domain; localization; melting; mode-locked lasers; noise; order parameter; order-disorder phase transition; pulse generation; statistical mechanics approach; Laser mode locking; Laser noise; Laser theory; Laser transitions; Layout; Optical pulse generation; Optical pulses; Phase noise; Temperature; Time measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Quantum Electronics Conference, 2003. EQEC '03. European

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7733-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EQEC.2003.1313879

Filename

1313879