Diversity of oscillation regimes, polystability, and hysteresis phenomena in lasers with bleaching filters (Review)

The oscillation kinetics in a laser with a noninertial bleaching filter is studied based on bifurcation theory. Analytical expressions for bifurcation curves are defined, and a computation method is proposed for the case when simple formulas are not obtainable. Furthermore, the conditions for the existence of time-independent steady-state regimes and those necessary for the radiation intensity and pulse frequency hysteresis are determined. It is shown that the main properties of the oscillation and bifurcation curves computed from the proposed method agree well with computer-generated results.