Interaction of counterpropagating circularly polarized waves in an He–Ne ring laser with a gain greatly exceeding its losses

A theoretical and experimental investigation was made of the interaction between counterpropagating waves in an He–Ne ring laser having a circularly anisotropic resonator. This was done for large values of the ratio of the gain to the losses when the gain saturation was comparable with the gain itself. The dependences of the counterpropagating wave intensities and of the frequency of beats (formed when a longitudinal magnetic field was applied to the active medium) on the resonator detuning in a single-mode 0.63 μ wavelength laser were obtained experimentally. Numerically found theoretical dependences were in good agreement with experiment for values of the ratio of the gain to the losses of up to 2.9.