Theory of laser oscillation on two or more coupled transitions

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Abstract
Aid or competition between two laser modes oscillating on different transitions of a three-level medium are studied following the method of Lamb. An arbitrary amount of Doppler broadening is allowed for. The "electric-quadrupole" term generated by back-to-back transitions of the two modes but having vanishing electric dipole moment is found to have little effect on the oscillation intensities in typically observed circumstances. This fact justifies, in part, the rate-equation approximation commonly used in multilevel analysis. For a bidirectional ring cascade configuration, however, this coherence term can be important because of constructive interference familiar from two-photon, Doppler-free spectroscopy. The ordinary (i.e., hole-burning) cross-saturation terms for cascade transitions produce mutual mode aid, rather than competition as in the competitive cases. A curious consequence of this difference is greater accuracy in the third-order theory of cascade transitions than in that of competitive transitions, as a result of partial cancellation of errors incurred through neglect of higher orders. The treatment is generalized to multilevel media (four or more levels) with numerical illustration and discussion of the method's relationship to laser oscillation involving diatomic molecules.