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It is demonstrated experimentally and theoretically that a light-shift-induced level crossing in an oblique magnetic field results in a nonmonotonous dependency of the transmission of a sodium vapor cell on the input power. If feedback by a single plane mirror is added, bistability of the transmission and of the beam profile (resonatorless transverse optical bistability) is observed. The origin of the bistable behavior and the parameter dependencies is explained by the properties of the homogeneous solution. Numerical simulations with a Gaussian incident beam reproduce well the switching behavior of the beam profile found in the experiment.
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Ackemann et al. (1997) studied this question.
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