Experimental study of the response of a bad cavity bistable system to fast light switch-on

Abstract

Preliminary results are reported on the response of an intrinsic bistable system to the rapid switch-on of an injected light field. The bistable system consists of a linear array of 25 sodium atomic beams contained in a low finesse Fabry—Perot etalon. The beams are aligned perpendicular to the direction of propagation of the cavity field and are collimated sufficiently to resolve the D-line ground state 3 2 S 1/2 hyperfine structure. The etalon conditions are such that the cavity lifetime is an estimated 6 ns compared with the atomic lifetime of 16 ns; hence the system approaches the bad cavity limit in which the atom dynamics should be observable. The radiation from a single-mode ring dye laser is switched on to the bistable system in approximately 1 ns. Although preliminary results show low branch to high branch switching there is no evidence of the expected nutational oscillations.