We study the influence of asymmetric coupling strengths on the onset of light intensity oscillations in an experimental system consisting of two semiconductor lasers cross coupled optoelectronically with a time delay. We discover a scaling law that relates the amplitudes of oscillations and the coupling strengths. These observations are in agreement with a theoretical model. These results could be applicable to the population dynamics of other systems, such as the spread of disease in human populations coupled by migration.

Synchronization of chaotic systems has been studied extensively, and especially, the possible applications to the communication systems motivated many research areas. We demonstrate the effect of the frequency bandwidth limitations in the communication channel on the synchronization of two unidirectionally coupled Mackey-Glass (MG) analog circuits, both numerically and experimentally. MG system is known to generate high dimensional chaotic signals. The chaotic signal generated from the drive MG system is modified by a low pass filter and is then transmitted to the response MG system. Our results show that the inclusion of the dominant frequency component of the original drive signals is crucial to achieve synchronization between the drive and response circuits. The maximum cross correlation and the corresponding time shift reveal that the frequency-dependent coupling introduced by the low pass filtering effect in the communication channel change the quality of synchronization.

Abstract. We consider a model for two lasers that are mutually coupled optoelectronically by modulating the pump of one laser with the intensity deviations of the other. Signal propagation time in the optoelectronic loop causes a significant delay leading to the onset of oscillatory output. Multiscale perturbation methods are used to describe the amplitude and period of oscillations as a function of the coupling strength and delay time. For weak coupling the oscillations have the laser's relaxation period, and the amplitude varies as the one-fourth power of the parameter deviations from the bifurcation point. For order-one coupling strength the period is determined as multiples of the delay time, and the amplitude varies with a square-root power law. Because we allow for independent control of the individual coupling constants, for certain parameter values there is an atypical amplitude-resonance phenomena. Finally, our theoretical results are consistent with recent experimental observations when the inclusion of a low-pass filter in the coupling loop is taken into account.