Bistability and chaos in an autonomous Nd:YAG laser with a weakly anisotropic resonator

The effect of resonator anisotropy on the dynamics of two orthogonal components of the radiation field of a linear Nd:YAG laser is studied theoretically. The vector model is used to determine the range of laser parameters in which the dynamic chaos regime emerges in an autonomous laser with one axial mode. It is shown that there exist bistability regions with different pairs of stable states: the bistability ranges of two stationary states with circularly polarised radiation, bistability of a stationary state and a periodic self-modulating regime as well as the bistability of a stationary state and a quasi-periodic pulse regime.