Abstract

The dynamical behavior of excitable media is very well known in biological (cardiac tissu) and chemical systems (BZ reaction). Such behavior was theoretically predicted in optics [1] but there was no experimental evidence up to now. He, we proof, though a series of experimental measurements, that semiconductor lasers, and specially VCSEL’s, behave as excitable media when stressed by an optical feedback, injected by an external coherent field, or simply, when the active media is placed inside a double cavity.

© 1996 IEEE