Abstract

A route to chaos via period doubling bifurcations is one of the most studied scenarios of a transition to chaos in class B lasers with modulated losses. On this way to chaos as the bifurcation parameter increases the laser system exhibits a sequential formation of period doubling bifurcations which terminate at an accumulation point. Then through an inverse cascade of period doublings which results from a series of merging crises, the laser system ends with fully chaotic behaviour. There exist two critical points which limit the existence of the response at the first subharmonic frequency: the first period doubling bifurcation point and the merging point where the two last chaotic subbands merge into a single chaotic attractor.

© 1998 IEEE