On period doubling bifurcations in semiconductor lasers

In semiconductor lasers, spectral hole burning, asymmetrical, longitudinal-mode 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. In the paper we 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.