Optoelectronic-feedback control of laser diodes for chaotic optical communications

It is demonstrated that tailored optoelectronic feedback can be used to selectively excite periodic dynamical output from external cavity semiconductor lasers undergoing a period doubling bifurcation cascade on the route to the chaotic coherence collapse regime. The optoelectronic feedback can effectively suppress or invert the bifurcation sequence so that low order periodic motion can be resonantly excited from high order periodic or chaotic dynamics. The application of the technique in chaotic optical communications and its role in chaos control are discussed