Laser Dynamics with Competing Instabilities

Abstract

Successive transitions from Hopf bifurcation to Shilnikov chaos and eventually to regular spiking are observed in a laser with feedback on increase of a control parameter. Each one of these regimes is due to the dominant attraction of one at a time among three coexisting unstable fixed points. Hence, each situation has a global behavior sufficiently described by attribution of the major part of the return time to a single fixed point.