Bifurcation structure of cavity soliton dynamics in a VCSEL with saturable absorber and time-delayed feedback

Abstract

We consider a wide-aperture surface-emitting laser with a saturable absorber section subjected to time-delayed feedback. We adopt the mean-field approach assuming a single longitudinal mode operation of the solitary VCSEL. We investigate cavity soliton dynamics under the effect of time- delayed feedback in a self-imaging configuration where diffraction in the external cavity is negligible. Using bifurcation analysis, direct numerical simulations and numerical path continuation methods, we identify the possible bifurcations and map them in a plane of feedback parameters. We show that for both the homogeneous and localized stationary lasing solutions in one spatial dimension the time-delayed feedback induces complex spatiotemporal dynamics, in particular a period doubling route to chaos, quasiperiodic oscillations and multistability of the stationary solutions.