Abstract

Already several years ago [3], it was suggested that a laser with optical injection can respond to external perturbations by emitting spikes if the perturbation overcomes a certain threshold, all the spikes being identical to each other, in complete analogy with the behaviour of the simple theta-model neuron [1]. The underlying explanation of this phenomenon lies in the isomorphism between a model of neuron [1] and that of an over-damped oscillator with periodic forcing (often called the Adler equation [2]). The control of these spikes was only achieved recently [5], while their observation goes back to [4]. Although there is an excellent agreement between these observations and the predictions of the reduction to pure phase dynamics of a laser model [3], it was soon noticed that whenever the pure phase dynamics reduction ceases to be valid, more complex dynamical phenomena can take place, leading to multipulse excitability [6]. This has led to the investigation of the behaviour of a semiconductor laser locked to an external forcing in response to external perturbations beyond the simple case of the Adler-like mode. We observe resonator features of the neuron-like system and multi-spike responses. Beyond improving the understanding of the neuron-like excitable dynamics of the laser with injected signal, our aim is to leverage the multipulse excitability and the resonator features of the optical neuron analogue for optical data processing and to provide possible insight about complex solitons interactions in forced oscillatory media [7,8].

© 2017 IEEE