Instabilities of Self-Pumped Phase-Conjugate Laser

Abstract

Optical chaos has recently been observed in a phase-conjugate laser1 (PCL) where phase conjugation was obtained by degenerate four-wave- mixing in BaTiO3. This complex dynamical behaviour is not predicted by a simple third-power law for the phase-conjugate mirror (PCM) reflectivity. A nonlinear theory by Wright et al2 has also confirmed the possibility of optical instabilities in a PCL with external pumps and without a saturable gain medium.