Staircase Dynamics of a Photonic Microwave Oscillator Based on a Laser Diode with Delayed Optoelectronic Feedback

Abstract

A laser diode subjected to optoelectronic feedback in which some light is converted to photocurrent that is fed back into the laser injection terminals can display periodic oscillations in its optical intensity. We demonstrate experimental and numerical evidence that, as the feedback level is varied, a stepwise change in the oscillation frequency manifests itself in the output optical intensity. These transitions in the dynamics can either correspond to an abrupt jump between two limit cycles, associated with a subcritical torus bifurcation of a limit cycle, or to a progressive switching mediated by an intermediate quasiperiodic state. Finally, when ramping the feedback level down, hysteresis is observed in the sequence of switching events between the limit cycles. Such devices are of interest for photonic microwave sources for wavelength-division multiplexed radio-over-fiber systems.

Microwave Photonic Signal Generation in an Optically Injected Discrete Mode Semiconductor Laser

“…Additionally, recently reported InP-and silicon-based photonic integrated devices/circuits [6][7][8] further expand the perspective of photonic high-frequency microwave, and thus it becomes a very hot research topic in the fields of radio-over-fiber (RoF), optical signal processing, true time delay beamforming, subnoise detection, etc. [9][10][11][12].…”

Impact of filtering on photonic time-delay reservoir computing

“…The impact of different types of temporal masks on the RC performance has previously been investigated in 23 . Dimensionless equations describing the system were developed based on the models in 24,25 previously used for LDs with OE feedback, in which high-and low-pass filtering of the photodetected intensity have been included:…”

“…where I(t) is the normalized intensity of the laser field; N(t) is the carrier density; I FH (t) is the high-pass filtered intensity signal and τ H is the inverse of the high-pass filter cut-off frequency; I FL (t) is the low-pass filtered intensity signal and τ L the inverse of the low-pass filter cut-off frequency; P is the pump-above-the-threshold parameter with a modulation function M f (t) for the masked input data and maximum modulation amplitude ξ •P ; η is the feedback strength (either positive or negative); τ is the feedback delay time; and ε is the ratio of the photon to the carrier lifetimes. We consider the following set of experimentally relevant parameters, which were estimated based on the observations in 24 , for further numerical analysis: ε = 0.1; τ H = 2000; τ = 1000; N = 48; ξ = 0.1. Our choice for the number of nodes stems from the fact that for N > 48, the MC tends to saturate because the modulation frequency 1/θ becomes higher than the relaxation frequency, and system's response to pump current modulation becomes damped 11 .…”

Intermittent dynamical state switching in discrete-mode semiconductor lasers subject to optical feedback

“…Moreover, intermittency has also been observed in various classes of lasers such as solid-state lasers [7], gas lasers [8] and semiconductor lasers (SLs) [9][10][11]. For SLs, external perturbations are usually required to drive the SL into chaos, which generally includes optical feedback, optical injection, optoelectronic feedback or modulation [12][13][14]. Among these perturbations, optical feedback is commonly adopted because of the simplicity and high dimensionality [15][16][17].…”