Time characteristics of a ring laser with a bleachable filter

A theory of the development of mode locking in a ring laser is given. Equations are obtained for the relationship between, the forward and reverse waves in the course of bleaching of a nonlinear filter. The equations are compared with the time characteristics of the forward and reverse waves in a ring laser determined experimentally with an image-converter camera. It is shown that the time characteristics of the forward and reverse waves are strongly correlated when the concentration of the bleachable absorber is high, but this correlation becomes weaker with decreasing concentration of the absorber.