On period doubling bifurcations in semiconductor lasers

In semiconductor lasers, spectral hole burning asymmetrical longitudinal-more competition, and population fluctuations in the carrier density are modelled by a nonlinear gain term in the rate equations. For physical, realistic values of the nonlinear gain parameter (10^-24 m³), period doubling bifurcations and chaotic behaviour resulting from periodic forcing are suppressed in agreement with experimental findings. The authors predict the bifurcations as a result of instabilities in the fully nonlinear solutions to the rate equations with nonlinear gain. The predictions are shown to agree with our direct numerical solutions of the rate equations