Abstract

In their review about intracavity laser spectroscopy, P. E. Toschek and V. Baev in Laser Spectroscopy and New Ideas, edited by W. M. Yen and M. D. Levenson, Springer Series in Optical Science ~Springer, Berlin, 1987 have shown that multimode lasers are needed to obtain a high sensitivity. In this paper we show that two modes is enough. We discuss first the ideal case where only the spontaneous emission limits the sensitivity. In a second part we take into account the spatial hole burning, which couples the two modes and has for effect a lower limitation of the sensitivity. Analytical expressions are given for the modified absorption coefficient and the time evolution of the intensity of the two modes is calculated by numerical integration.

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