Noise versus chaos in acousto-optic bistability

Abstract
We present a study of the evolution to chaos for the acousto-optic bistable device. We numerically solve the difference-differential equation describing the system which shows excellent agreement with the experiment. We analyze the influence of noise—additive and multiplicative—on the bifurcation sequence and on the onset of chaos. It is shown experimentally that both types of noise create a gap in bifurcation sequence. In addition we present a comparison between theory and experiment of the time evolution of the signal.