Thresholdless intensity fluctuations in a slow-inversion microlaser

Summary form only given. There is considerable current interest in microlasers, both from a fundamental and from a practical point of view. The ultimate goal is to have a sufficiently small laser that /spl beta/, the fraction of the spontaneous emission going into the lasing mode, becomes equal to one. When approaching the /spl beta/=1 limit, the usual laser threshold disappears, and such devices are often referred to as "thresholdless" lasers We report experiments, which show a remarkable deviation from conventional behavior. These experiments were performed on short (0.3 mm) Nd:YVO/sub 4/ microchip lasers.