Spontaneous oscillations of the emission spectrum of a multimode wide-band laser

An experimental investigation was made of the kinetics of the emission spectrum of a cw ring dye laser with spectral resolution of the individual resonator modes. It was found that in the traveling-wave regime the maximum of the spectral distribution exhibited regular spontaneous oscillations with a period depending on the excess of the pump power above the threshold and on the length and other parameters of the resonator.