Instabilities and chaos in semiconductor lasers with optical injection

We report on experimental measurements and theoretical calculations based on a single mode rate equation model of a quantum well laser subject to strong external optical injection. Semiconductor laser diodes provide a technologically important system to investigate both high speed nonlinear dynamics and noise processes in lasers. However, because of the very short time scales (subnanosecond) on which the dynamics occur, it is difficult to measure the time dependent behavior directly. Hence, Fourier domain measurements must be combined with model calculations in order to extract detailed information about the nature of the dynamics