Effects of transverse beam variation on bifurcations in an intrinsic bistable ring cavity

Instabilities associated with bistable branches of positive differential gain are investigated numerically in a ring-cavity bistable device, allowing for transverse variation of the laser beam. Additional instability domains beyond those predicted by plane-wave analysis are shown to occur. The nature of the bifurcation sequences within each domain is different from the plane-wave case and is characterized by quasiperiodic and frequency-locked behavior. Some sequences are very similar to experimentally observed bifurcations in hydrodynamics.