Criteria for synchronization of chaotic diode lasers

Summary form only given. The possibility of using chaos synchronization to enhance the privacy in the transmission of information has attracted the attention of many researchers in the last years. We obtain some criteria to predict the region of parameters at which synchronization between two chaotic laser diodes (LD) may occur. We consider a system composed by two external-cavity single mode LD operating in the chaotic regime. The system is describe by the Lang-Kobayashi equations with a coupling term in the equation for the slave laser (SL) to take into account the injected light coming from the master laser (ML). The coupling strength is denoted by /spl kappa//sub c/. We consider that both lasers have the same external cavity configuration. Chaos synchronization is studied as a function of both the cavity losses difference, /spl Delta//spl gamma/=/spl gamma//sub s/-/spl gamma//sub m/, and the detuning /spl Delta//spl omega/=/spl omega//sub m/-/spl omega//sub s/, where s and m stand for the ML and SL.