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In this study, an acoustic resonator – a bass brass instrument – with multiple resonances coupled to an exciter – the player’s lips – with one resonance is modelled by a multidimensional dynamical system, and studied using a continuation and bifurcation software. Bifurcation diagrams are explored with respect to the blowing pressure, in particular with focus on the minimal blowing pressure allowing stable periodic oscillations and the associated frequency. The behaviour of the instrument is first studied close to a (non oscillating) equilibrium using linear stability analysis. This allows to determine the conditions at which an equilibrium destabilises and as such where oscillating regimes can emerge (corresponding to a sound production). This approach is useful to characterise the ease of playing of a brass instrument, which is assumed here to be related – as a first approximation – to the linear threshold pressure. In particular, the lower the threshold pressure, the lower the physical effort the player has to make to play a note [The Science of Brass Instruments. Springer-Verlag, 2021]. Cases are highlighted where periodic solutions in the bifurcation diagrams are reached for blowing pressures below the value given by the linear stability analysis. Thus, bifurcation diagrams allow a more in-depth analysis. Particular attention is devoted to the first playing regime of bass brass instruments (the pedal note and the ghost note of a tuba in particular), whose behaviour qualitatively differs from a trombone to a euphonium for instance.

We report experimental and theoretical results on the pulse train dynamics in an excitable semiconductor microcavity laser with an integrated saturable absorber and delayed optical feedback. We show how short optical control pulses can trigger, erase, or retime regenerative pulse trains in the external cavity. Both repulsive and attractive interactions between pulses are observed, and are explained in terms of the internal dynamics of the carriers. A bifurcation analysis of a model consisting of a system of nonlinear delay differential equations shows that arbitrary sequences of coexisting pulse trains are very long transients towards weakly stable periodic solutions with equidistant pulses in the external cavity.

Self-sustained musical instruments (bowed string, woodwind and brass instruments) can be modeled by nonlinear lumped dynamical systems. Among these instruments, flutes and flue organ pipes present the particularity to be modeled as a delay dynamical system. In this paper, such a system, a toy model of flute-like instruments, is studied using numerical continuation. Equilibrium and periodic solutions are explored with respect to the blowing pressure, with focus on amplitude and frequency evolutions along the different solution branches, as well as "jumps" between periodic solution branches. The influence of a second model parameter (namely the inharmonicity) on the behaviour of the system is addressed. It is shown that harmonicity plays a key role in the presence of hysteresis or quasi-periodic regime. Throughout the paper, experimental results on a real instrument are presented to illustrate various phenomena, and allow some qualitative comparisons with numerical results.

In this paper we exploit the method of numerical continuation combined with orthogonal collocation to determine the steady-state oscillations of a model of flute-like instruments that is formulated as a nonlinear neutral delay differential equation. The delay term in the model causes additional complications in the analysis of the behaviour of the model, in contrast to models of other wind instruments which are formulated as ordinary differential equations. Fortunately, numerical continuation provides bifurcation diagrams that show branches of stable and unstable static and periodic solutions of the model and their connections at bifurcations, thus enabling an in depth analysis of the global dynamics. Furthermore, it allows us to predict the thresholds of the different registers of the flute-like instrument and thus to explain the classical phenomenon of register change and the associated hysteresis.

A semiconductor micropillar laser with delayed optical feedback is considered. In the excitable regime, we show that a single optical perturbation can trigger a train of pulses that is sustained for a finite duration. The distribution of the pulse train duration exhibits an exponential behavior characteristic of a noise-induced process driven by uncorrelated white noise present in the system. The comparison of experimental observations with theoretical and numerical analysis of a minimal model yields excellent agreement. Importantly, the random switch-off process takes place between two attractors of different nature: an equilibrium and a periodic orbit. Our analysis shows that there is a small time window during which the pulsations are very sensitive to noise, and this explains the observed strong bias toward switch-off. These results raise the possibility of all optical control of the pulse train duration that may have impact for practical applications in photonics and may also apply to the dynamics of other noise-driven excitable systems with delayed feedback.

An excitable semiconductor micropillar laser with delayed optical feedback is able to regenerate pulses by the excitable response of the laser. It has been shown that almost any pulse sequence can, in principle, be excited and regenerated by this system over short periods of time. We show experimentally and numerically that this is not true anymore in the long term: rather, the system settles down to a stable periodic orbit with equalized timing between pulses. Several such attracting periodic regimes with different numbers of equalized pulse timing may coexist and we study how they can be accessed with single external optical pulses of sufficient strength that need to be timed appropriately. Since the observed timing equalization and switching characteristics are generated by excitability in combination with delayed feedback, our results will be of relevance beyond the particular case of photonics, especially in neuroscience.

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