title: Experimental study of the stochastic nature of the pulsation self-starting process in passive mode locking.
abstract: We present an experimental study of the probabilistic nature of pulsation self-starting in passively mode-locked lasers. It is a Poissonian process that results from a noise-activated switching barrier. The switching rate from cw operation to pulsation when the laser pump level is turned on has an exponential dependence that is inversely proportional to the square of the laser power.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion, Haifa, Israel. barac@tx.technion.ac.il
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vodonos
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bekker
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Smulakovsky
authors.forename: Ariel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gordon
authors.forename: Omri
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gat
authors.forename: Naum K
authors.initials: NK
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.forename: Baruch
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fischer