Optical bistability in nonlinear fiber resonators driven by laser sources of arbitrary coherence

We present a theory of optical bistability for fiber resonators driven by amplitude-stabilized laser sources of arbitrary coherence. The nonlinear wave equation is solved and the results are applied to analyze the effect of the source coherence on the relevant parameters of the structure such as the switch-on and switch-off powers, the critical input power for the onset of bistability and the cavity critical mistuning.<
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