Abstract A theoretical analysis of absorptive optical bistability in a passive atomic medium and bidirectional lasing in an active atomic medium is presented. The atomic medium consists of a collection of cold two-level atoms and the atom-radiation field interaction is described using a one-dimensional semiclassical model. It is shown that when the effects of atomic recoil are included self-consistently, the interaction between the atoms and the radiation can be changed significantly from that when the effects of atomic recoil are neglected.
