Investigation of a CO2 laser response to loss perturbation near period doubling

Abstract

We have observed, in experiments with a loss-driven CO2 laser operating near the onset of a period-doubling bifurcation, strong amplification of a perturbation signal at half the driving frequency. However, deamplification has been observed above the bifurcation point. Using a two-level laser model we have obtained reasonably good agreement between numerical and experimental results.