Optical instabilities: new theories for colored-noise-driven laser instabilities

Novel colored-noise theories for optical instabilities are presented and compared with conventional approaches. In contrast to the conventional approaches, valid for small noise correlation times only, these new theories allow for a description of moderate-to-strong noise color and are of relevance particularly for the dye-laser instability and noise-dithered ring-laser gyroscopes. The theories are applied to the dye-laser instability and optical bistability. For the dye laser we evaluate the stationary probability and the integral of the stationary intensity correlation function (relaxation time), which both compare favorably with exact numerical results. For optical bistability we present the stationary probability and the switching rates.