Abstract

Using a flow-through laser with an unstable-cavity-multibeam-amplifier optical system as an example, it is shown that, when the active medium moves through a spatially periodic field, self-excited perturbations can build up in the flow of the medium, resulting in instability of the steady-state lasing. This phenomenon is explained by the interference of the perturbation waves formed in the moving medium at the edges of the beams.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

Instabilities of laser beams counterpropagating through a Brillouin-active medium

Paul Narum, Alexander L. Gaeta, Mark D. Skeldon, and Robert W. Boyd
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 5(3) 623-628 (1988)

Mode-medium instability in an unstable resonator

C. C. Sung, Y. Q. Li, and Martin E. Smithers
Appl. Opt. 27(1) 58-65 (1988)

Optical instabilities in a nonlinear Kerr medium

Yaron Silberberg and Israel Bar-Joseph
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 1(4) 662-670 (1984)

Transverse profile instabilities of the laser beam in the active media of pulsed excimer lasers

A. S. Kostyuchenko, V. S. Kuznetsov, S. V. Fedorov, and M. S. Yur’ev
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 9(8) 1283-1287 (1992)

Observation of instabilities of laser beams counterpropagating through a Brillouin medium

Alexander L. Gaeta, Mark D. Skeldon, Robert W. Boyd, and Paul Narum
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 6(9) 1709-1713 (1989)