How to have passively Q-switched lasers self-pulsate

Author

Shahruz, Shahram M.

Author_Institution

Eng. Res. Inst., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

1999

fDate

2-4 Jun 1999

Firstpage

780

Abstract

The rate equations of passively Q-switched lasers are considered. These equations represent the dynamics of the photon number in the laser cavity, the population inversion of the laser, and the ground-state population of the saturable absorber, when excited by an input (pumping rate). Having the rate equations, (i) it is shown that the laser is the bounded-input bounded-state (BIBS) and the bounded-input bounded-output (BIBO) stable; (ii) the amplitudes of step inputs are determined for which all equilibrium points of the laser are unstable. The boundedness of the laser output and the instability of its equilibrium points imply that the laser can have a periodic, a quasi-periodic, or a chaotic output. When the output is periodic, the laser is self-pulsating, which is the desirable behavior of the laser

Keywords

Q-switching; laser stability; laser theory; optical chaos; optical pumping; optical saturable absorption; population inversion; bounded-input bounded-output stable; bounded-input bounded-state; chaotic output; equilibrium points; ground-state population; laser cavity; passively Q-switched lasers; photon number; population inversion; pumping rate; quasi-periodic; rate equations; saturable absorber; self-pulsating; self-pulsating lasers; Equations; Fiber lasers; Laser excitation; Laser feedback; Laser modes; Laser noise; Laser stability; Noise reduction; Optical noise; Pump lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

American Control Conference, 1999. Proceedings of the 1999

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

ISSN

0743-1619

Print_ISBN

0-7803-4990-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ACC.1999.783146

Filename

783146