Antiphase dynamics in a multimode semiconductor laser with optical injection

Abstract

Type of publicationArticle (peer-reviewed) A detailed experimental study of antiphase dynamics in a two-mode semiconductor laser with optical injection is presented. The device is a specially designed Fabry-Pérot laser that supports two primary modes with a terahertz frequency spacing. Injection in one of the primary modes of the device leads to a rich variety of single and two-mode dynamical scenarios, which are reproduced with remarkable accuracy by a fourdimensional rate equation model. Numerical bifurcation analysis reveals the importance of torus bifurcations in mediating transitions to antiphase dynamics and of saddle node of limit-cycle bifurcations in switching of the dynamics between single-and two-mode regimes.

Optical injection in semiconductor ring lasers

“…The fact that ∆ OP = −∆ IP follows immediately from the equations (1). Contrary to two-color lasers where the mode spacing is highly nondegenerate [10], the mode spacing in SRLs is degenerate since the counterpropagating modes have identical frequencies. For this reason, the counterpropagating modes in SRLs have a significant phase coupling.…”

“…For this reason, the counterpropagating modes in SRLs have a significant phase coupling. On the other hand, the phases of the two modes in two-color lasers are decoupled and only the intensity of the uninjected mode influences the dynamics [10]. Moreover, contrary to SRLs, saturation effects in two-color lasers are such that self-saturation is stronger than cross-saturation [10], affecting the relative stability of the modes.…”

“…Optical injection in other * Electronic address: wcoomans@vub.ac.be † Also with Department of Physics two-mode semiconductor lasers such as VCSELs [9] and two-color lasers [10] has also recently been investigated. The bimodal character of these devices gives rise to more intricate dynamical behavior, such as bistable operating regimes governed by optical injection.…”

Dispersion-induced dynamics of coupled modes in a semiconductor laser with saturable absorption

“…9 is beyond the scope of the current paper, we can highlight a number of interesting parallels with previous work on optically injected dual-mode devices [22,27]. Mathematically, this system is also four dimensional, but it features a single, three dimensional invariant manifold corresponding to the single-mode injected system.…”

“…The dynamics on each of these sub-manifolds reduces to the single-mode LSA system, and for this reason we will refer to these sub-manifolds as the singlemode manifolds of the system. Based on previous estimates obtained for similar devices [22], we take the carrier lifetime in the gain section, τ s = 1 ns. The mirror losses of the device are calculated to be α m = 13.8 cm −1 , and we estimate the internal losses to be α int = 9.2 cm −1 .…”