@InProceedings{Supelec895,
author = {Emeric Mercier and Andreas Karsaklian dal Bosco and Delphine Wolfersberger and Marc Sciamanna},
title = {{Bifurcation to chaos and extreme event in a laser diode with phase-conjugate feedback}},
year = {2014},
booktitle = {{Proceeding of SPIE, Semiconductor Lasers and Laser dynamics, Brussels}},
abstract = {Phase-conjugate optical feedback (PCF) has been largely used as a
way to stabilize and reduce the linewidth of
laser emission but is also known to generate complex dynamics
including self-pulsation and chaos. In contrast
to the large number of theoretical works, there have been only
few experiments reporting on nonlinear dynamics
from PCF. Most importantly, experiments so far have not addressed
the peculiarities of the PCF dynamics in
comparison with dynamics observed from conventional optical
feedback (COF). We report here experimentally
and theoretically on two chaotic dynamics that relate to the
peculiar dynamical properties of a laser diode with
PCF. First, we nd a chaotic dynamics that resembles the
so-called low-frequency
uctuations (LFF) of a laser
diode with COF, i.e. the output power shows abrupt dropouts at
randomly distributed time-intervals followed
by a slower recovery. Although the LFF in PCF shows similar
statistical properties to those observed in the
LFF in COF, they originate from a distinctively dierent
bifurcation scenario. Increasing the PCF strength the
laser diode shows successive bifurcations to time-periodic
solutions at the frequency of the external cavity and
multiples - also called 'external-cavity modes' (ECMs). In
contrast to COF the PCF laser system shows no
steady state for large enough feedback strength. Following the
destabilization of several such ECMs to chaotic
attractors, the dynamics shows a transition to a global attractor
connecting the chaotic ECMs and that explains
the sequence of power dropouts and recoveries. In addition we
show how the bifurcations on these self-pulsing
ECMs generate dynamics with extreme events, i.e. pulses with peak
intensities well above the average value of
the peaks in the output power and that show properties similar to
the rogue waves in hydrodynamics. This is
the rst demonstration of temporal extreme events in a
time-delayed optical system.}
}