Dissipative optical flow in a nonlinear Fabry-Pérot cavity

We describe a classical nonlinear optical system that displays superfluidity and its breakdown. The system consists of a self-defocusing refractive medium inside a Fabry-Pérot cavity with a cylindrical obstacle. We have numerically solved for the transmitted beam when an incident plane wave strikes the cavity at an oblique angle. The presence of the incident beam pins the steady-state phase of the output, preventing the formation of vortices or time-dependent flow. When the incident beam is switched off, a transient wake of moving optical vortices is produced. This is analogous to the breakdown of superfluidity above a critical velocity.     

A power and wavelength detuning-dependent hysteresis loop in a single mode Fabry-Prot laser diode

In this paper, we observe experimentally the optical bistability induced by the side-mode injection power and wave-length detuning in a single mode Fabry-Prot laser diode (SMFP-LD). Results show that the bistability characteristics of the dominant and injected modes are strongly dependent on the injected input optical power and wavelength detuning in an SMFP-LD. We observe three types of hysteresis loops: counterclockwise, clockwise, and butterfly hysteresis with various loop widths. In the case of a bistability loop caused by injection power, the transition from counterclockwise to clockwise in the hysteresis direction with the wavelength detuning from 0.028 nm to 0.112 nm is observed in a way of butterfly hysteresis for the dominant mode by increasing the wavelength detuning. The width of hysteresis loop, induced by wavelength detuning is also changed while the injection power is enhanced from 7 dBm to 5 dBm.