Multimode dynamical behavior of semiconductor lasers with optical feedback and its synchronization

Summary form only given. Synchronization of two semiconductor lasers exhibiting chaotic oscillations at sub-nanosecond time scales can be experimentally achieved, as we demonstrated recently. We showed that the receiver laser acts as a "chaos filter" responding differently to the chaotic fluctuations and additionally encoded signals: it reproduces the chaotic fluctuations of the transmitter laser but suppresses additionally encoded signals. The lasers we use are multimode Fabry-Perot lasers, for which we achieve chaos synchronization under conditions of optical injection locking of multiple modes. . In this contribution we report the results of an experimental study of the dynamical interactions between modes and conditions for synchronization of the multimode dynamics in coupled lasers. Such studies are an essential step toward using multimode dynamics for coding.