New operational regimes of a CO2 laser with an intracavity saturable absorber

New operational regimes were achieved experimentally in a CO₂ laser containing CH₃OH vapour as an intracavity saturable absorber. In these regimes the time dependences of the intensities could be interpreted on the basis of heteroclinic orbits in the phase space around two, three, or more fixed unstable points with nonzero intensities.