High-speed chaos in an optical feedback system with flexible timescales

Author

Blakely, J.N. ; Illing, Lucas ; Gauthier, Daniel J.

Author_Institution

U.S. Army Res. Dev., & Eng. Command, Redstone Arsenal, AL, USA

Volume

40

Issue

3

fYear

2004

fDate

3/1/2004 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

299

Lastpage

305

Abstract

We describe a new optoelectronic device with time-delayed feedback that uses a Mach-Zehnder interferometer as passive nonlinearity and a semiconductor laser as a current-to-optical-frequency converter. Band-limited feedback allows tuning of the characteristic time scales of both the periodic and high dimensional chaotic oscillations that can be generated with the device. Our implementation of the device produces oscillations in the frequency range of tens to hundreds of megahertz. We develop a model and use it to explore the experimentally observed Andronov-Hopf bifurcation of the steady state and to estimate the dimension of the chaotic attractor.

Keywords

Mach-Zehnder interferometers; bifurcation; delays; differential equations; high-speed optical techniques; optical chaos; optical feedback; optical frequency conversion; optical tuning; optoelectronic devices; semiconductor lasers; Andronov-Hopf bifurcation; Mach-Zender interferometer; band-limited feedback; chaotic attractor; chaotic oscillations; current-to-optical-frequency converter; flexible timescales; high-speed chaos; optical feedback system; optoelectronic device; passive nonlinearity; semiconductor laser; tuning; Chaos; Character generation; Frequency; Laser feedback; Laser modes; Laser tuning; Optical feedback; Optical tuning; Optoelectronic devices; Semiconductor lasers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2003.823021

Filename

1271363