Theory of Relaxation Oscillations in Optical Masers†

Abstract

ABSTRACT It has been reported by various experimenters (Collins et al. 1060, Sorokin and Stevenson 1060) that the light output from optical masers sometimes consists of a series of intense short spikes. This paper, offers a theoretical explanation ‡ of these spikes, and gives simple formulae for the time interval between them and the rate at which they decay to a constant output level.