Optical Bistability

During the past few decades we have witnessed at least two major innovations in science which have had substantial impact on technology as well as science itself, pervasive enough to modify many facets of our daily lives. We refer, of course, to the tran­ sistor and the laser. It is striking that now with the advent of optical bistability we may have opened the door to another such field, which combines these two aspects (transistor and laser) and has the possibility for important device applications as well as providing a unique window into the as yet not thoroughly explored frontiers of nonequilibrium statistical physics. This has prompted us to organize an international conference on the subject of optical bistability to provide an adequate means for assessing the current state of the art of this important field and to stimulate further significant developments by means of in­ tense technical exchange and interaction among the leading scien­ tists in this subject area. Front Matter....Pages i-xi Conditions and Limitations in Intrinsic Optical Bistability....Pages 1-7 Semiclassical and Quantum Statistical Dressed Mode Description of Optical Bistability....Pages 9-29 Instabilities in Optical Bistability:Transform from CW to Pulsed....Pages 31-50 Bistable Systems in Nonlinear Optics....Pages 51-83 Bistability in Irradiated Josephson Junctions....Pages 85-92 Optical Bistability Experiments and Mean Field Theories....Pages 93-108 Optical Bistability in a GaAs Etalon....Pages 109-114 Optical Bistability and Multi-Stability in the Semiconductor InSb....Pages 115-126 Optical Bistability Effects in a Dye Ring Laser....Pages 127-150 Microwave Dispersive Bistability in a Confocal Fabry-Perot Microwave Cavity....Pages 151-171 Bistability and Phase Transitions of Nuclear Spin Systems....Pages 173-186 Transient Phenomena in Bistable Optical Devices....Pages 187-197 Analytic Description of Multiphoton Optical Bistability in a Ring Cavity....Pages 199-220 Active Two-Beam Optical Bistability....Pages 221-236 Absorptive and Dispersive Bistability for a Doppler-Broadened Medium in a Fabry-Perot: Steady-State Description....Pages 237-264 The Role of Phases in the Transient Dynamics of Nonlinear Interferometers....Pages 265-279 Frequency Switching in Dispersive Optical Bistability....Pages 281-292 Dispersive Optical Bistability with Fluctuations....Pages 293-313 Fluctuations and Transitions in the Absorptive Optical Bistability....Pages 315-335 Short- and Long-Time Transient Evolution in Absorptive Optical Bistability....Pages 337-352 Cooperation in an “Optical-Bistability” System....Pages 353-366 The Driven Dicke Model and its Macroscopic Extension: Bistability or Bifurcation?....Pages 367-404 Optical Bistability Based Upon Atomic Correlation in a Small Volume....Pages 405-429 Complex Order Parameters in Quantum Optics First Order Phase Transition Analogies....Pages 431-446 Theory of Plane Wave Reflection and Refraction by the Nonlinear Interface....Pages 447-462 Optical Properties of Nonlinear Interfaces....Pages 463-480 Applications of the Generalized P-Representation to Optical Bistability....Pages 481-501 Effects of Propagation, Transverse Mode Coupling and Diffraction on Nonlinear Light Pulse Evolution....Pages 503-555 Back Matter....Pages 557-614