LASER WITH A NONLINEAR MIRROR - APPLICATION FOR IMPROVING THE OUTPUT POWER STABILITY OF A CW LASER

We put forward a new method for improving the output power stability o f a cw laser. The basic idea is to replace the output mirror of a lase r with a nonlinear mirror that is formed by a dispersive nonlinear Fab ry-Perot etalon. Based on the semiclassical dynamic model for this sys tem, first we derive the static conditions for this laser operating wi th stabilized output power, then we study the dynamic responses of out put power to gain fluctuations. Both static and dynamic results show t hat, compared with normal lasers, the output power stability of our la ser can be improved significantly when the output power fluctuations a re caused by the fluctuations of the gain. The improvement of the outp ut power can be explained by the fact that there exists an optical ser voloop in this laser that is produced by the nonlinear mirror. (C) 199 6 Optical Society of America