The role of population pulsations in single-mode laser instabilities

This paper gives three principal results: One, population pulsations are responsible for both the multiwavelength and the chaotic single-wavelength instabilities of single-mode operation in unidirectional ring lasers containing homogeneously-broadened media. Two, in appropriate limits the Fourier expansion method for treating three-frequency operation in saturation spectroscopy is equivalent to the linear stability analyses in laser theory and optical bistability. Three, inclusion of population pulsations significantly increases the instability range over that predicted by Casperson for single-mode bad-cavity lasers containing inhomogeneously-broadened media.