Operation of a ring multimode laser containing a saturable absorber with dominant inhomogeneous line broadening

Multimode operation of a ring laser containing a saturable absorber is considered. When the pump energy is distributed uniformly between all the modes, the condition for appearance of an optical bistability is similar to the same condition for the single-mode operation. However, if the pump energy is distributed inhomogeneously over the modes in the amplifying part of the laser, an optical bistability appears only at certain modes and this is due to competition between them.