Abstract

Chaotic behavior and the route to chaos in various laser systems are the subjects of intense studies in view of both their scientific interest and their potential applications. Self sustained oscillations may represent one form of a quite general complex dynamic behavior related to the appearance of optical turbulence or optical chaos. According to the properties of nonlinear dynamic systems, one would expect such pulsation to be replaced by a sequence of oscillations that culminate in deterministic chaos. In case of semiconductor lasers, the chaos has only been experimentally achieved either by an external cavity mirror reflection or by periodic modulation. We report what is, to our knowledge, the first observation of chaotic behaviors of a V-channeled substrate inner-stripe (VSIS) laser brought about by optoelectronic feedback. The laser is self-pulsating within the range of 24 GHz under dc bias. The self-pulsating rf signal was received by a high-speed photodiode, amplified, and partially fed back to the laser driver. By varying the strength of the feedback, we brought the self-pulsation into the chaotic regime. Observed spectra and accompanying waveforms show a route to chaos through various frequency combinations. Experimental results and calculations will be presented.

© 1990 Optical Society of America