Amplitude and phase fluctuations in a noisy cavity

Summary

For absorptive optical bistability in a Fabry-Perot cavity it is shown that fluctuations in the bifurcation parameter dominate fluctuations in the input field amplitude. A step is also taken towards removing the phase-locking approximation and shows that the latter is quite good when the input field phase fluctuations are small and its amplitude is not in the bistable transition zone.