Dynamics of the transient buildup of emission in Nd/sup 3+/-doped fiber lasers

The two-stage process of the transient buildup of emission in Nd/sup 4+/-doped fiber lasers is described both experimentally and theoretically. After switching on the pump, spontaneous emission increases first until the gain becomes sufficient to compensate for the cavity losses; the laser field then develops and reaches the steady state after more or less regular oscillations. During this second stage, an almost chaotic spiking is obtained either for high pumping rates and/or at low temperatures. The whole set of these dynamical scenarios is not described under the usual assumptions of uniform cavity losses over the whole field spectrum and of pure homogeneous broadening for the transition line, but rather a modified form of the Maxwell-Bloch equations which retains some frequency dependence for the losses in the cavity and the inhomogeneous broadening as well is proposed.<
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