April 2021
Spotlight Summary by John M. Dudley
Numerical modeling of extreme events observed in the all-solid-state laser with a saturable absorber
Studying rogue waves and extreme events in optics is important to understand instabilities in lasers, and also to reveal interdisciplinary links with other areas of science. In this paper, a numerical study of a self-pulsing solid-state laser has been carried out with the specific goal of determining the minimum elements necessary for the system to generate extreme high intensity pulses. The underlying approach has been to develop a model, which is both realistic and as simple as possible, and this has yielded a robust description of the complex system dynamics using only a small number of ordinary differential equations. Numerical solutions reveal that the generation of extreme pulses requires at least 5 transverse modes and mode interactions, both in the laser gain medium and in the laser saturable absorber. Although studied for one particular laser system, the results are of general interest in showing that extreme events can develop in a system with only a few degrees of freedom. This is a significant result, which will likely impact studies of rogue wave instabilities in related fields of optics, as well as in other disciplines such as hydrodynamics.
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Article Information
Numerical modeling of extreme events observed in the all-solid-state laser with a saturable absorber
Carlos Bonazzola
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 38(4) 1398-1404 (2021) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF