Features of the extreme events observed in an all-solid-state laser with saturable absorber?

C.BONAZZOLA, ALEJANDRO HNILO, M.KOVALSKY Y J.TREDICCE

PHYSICAL REVIEW A - ATOMIC, MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2015 vol. 92 p. 538161 - 538168

1050-2947

Extreme events in the form of pulses of extraordinary intensity (sometimes also called optical rogue waves)are easily observed in the chaotic regime of an all-solid-state laser with a saturable absorber if the Fresnel numberof the cavity is high. This result suggests that the nonlinear interaction among transverse modes is an essentialingredient in the formation of extreme events in this type of laser, but there is no theoretical description ofthe phenomenon yet. We report here a set of experimental results on the regularities of these extreme eventsin order to provide a basis for the development of such a description. Among these results, we point out here(i) the decay of the correlation across the transversal section of the laser beam, and (ii) the appearance of extremeevents even if the time elapsed since the previous pulse is relatively short (in terms of the average interpulse timeinterval), which indicates the existence of some unknown mechanism of energy storage.We hypothesize that thismechanism is related to the imperfect depletion of the gain by some of the transversal modes. We also presentevidence in support of this hypothesis.