Abstract

Ring lasers have been the subject of a huge amount of experimental and theoretical investigations, ranging from fundamental studies of its non-linear dynamics, to practical applications as the ring laser gyroscope, all-optical switching and optical memories[l]. We numerically investigate the switching properties of a single SRL operating in the bistable regime, under coherent optical pulse injection. We show that the fast switching dynamics is due to an energy redistribution process between the clockwise and counter-clockwise modes, that does not involve the (slow) carrier density variable. The theoretical analysis of the two-mode ring laser is based on a set of dimensionless semiclassical Lamb equations for the two (slowly varying) complex amplitudes of the counter-propagating fields E (CW mode) and E. (CCW mode) [2].

© 2007 IEEE