event
Monday 28 Oct 2013: Laser dynamics as a test bed for nonlinear dynamics
Andreas Amman - University College, Cork.
Harrison 101 15:00-16:00
Coupled semiconductor lasers show highly complex dynamical behaviour,
are easy to study experimentally and are of technological interest.
The combination of these features makes them an ideal target system
for the applied mathematician.
From a mathematical point of view, semiconductor lasers can be
accurately modelled on the basis of low-dimensional non-linear
ordinary differential equations. It is therefore highly profitable to
employ the powerful tools of bifurcation analysis to gain a
comprehensive understanding of observed phenomena and to predict new
dynamical regimes.
In this presentation I give two examples of this approach. First I
will consider an injected two-mode semiconductor laser. In this case
a codimension three cusp-pitchfork bifurcation leads to a novel type
of bursting which has not been found in any type of system before.
The second example is a system of two closely coupled single mode
lasers, where a codimension two Hopf-pitchfork bifurcation is
responsible for the appearance of two-colour symmetry-broken states.
