Role of Diffractive Coupling and Self-Focusing or Defocusing in the Dynamical Switching of a Bistable Optical Cavity

Optical bistability transients have been computed including one transverse Cartesian coordinate. With a Gaussian transverse input profile but weak diffractive coupling, the switchup intensity is radially dependent, and the output requires hundreds of round trips to reach steady state. Strong diffractive coupling results in whole-beam switchup and much faster convergence to steady state.