Lasers as Toda oscillators: An experimental confirmation

We study the transient oscillatory behavior of a Nd:YAG laser modulated in such a way that at the beginning of time evolution the population inversion is approximately equal to its threshold value and the photons present in the cavity are much less than at steady state. Under those conditions the laser dynamics is very regular. We measure the period and width of the pulses as a function of the pulse intensity finding a very good agreement with the predictions of the Toda oscillator model.