Correlations in electrically coupled chaotic lasers.

We show how two electrically coupled semiconductor lasers having optical feedback can present simultaneous antiphase correlated fast power fluctuations, and strong in-phase synchronized spikes of chaotic power drops. This quite counterintuitive phenomenon is demonstrated experimentally and confirmed by numerical solutions of a deterministic dynamical system of rate equations. The occurrence of negative and positive cross correlation between parts of a complex system according to time scales, as proved in our simple arrangement, is relevant for the understanding and characterization of collective properties in complex networks.

Experimental bifurcations and homoclinic chaos in a laser with a saturable absorber.

The shape and the peak values of the pulses from a passive Q-switching CO2 laser with SF6 as saturable absorber were detected while the laser was tuned in frequency across a longitudinal mode. A succession of stability windows, typical for bifurcation diagrams in the homoclinic scenario, was observed and the widths of those windows were measured. The expansion rate of the undulations in individual pulses was also obtained and compared to Floquet's multipliers given by the ratio of widths in consecutive windows. The dynamics is consistent with a homoclinic tangency to a periodic orbit.

Coarse grained variables and deterministic chaos in an excitable system.

Temporal coarse graining was applied to the dynamical variables of a semiconductor laser with optical feedback. The chaotic low frequency fluctuations obtained in numerical and experimental data are shown to have properties of a self-excitable deterministic system. External exciting noise is replaced by the ultrafast chaotic oscillations of the system. A low dimensional coarse-grained phase space is defined and time constants are introduced and measured for the exponential drop and recovery of the randomly excited equally shaped spikes.