Bifurcation in a cw-pumped Brillouin fiber-ring laser: Coherent soliton morphogenesis

Stability analysis allows the understanding of experimental steady and pulsed regimes observed in cw-pumped Brillouin fiber-ring lasers. The instantaneous acoustic response model proves to be singular, while the coherent stimulated-Brillouin-scattering (SBS) three-wave model yields a well-behaved Hopf bifurcation for a critical value of the feedback (several percent in intensity). The computed nonlinear dynamics shows self-organization of asymptotically stable Brillouin pulses, not depending on the initial noise. Further experiments support the bifurcation.