Bistability and torus break-up in a semiconductor laser with phase-conjugate feedback (Q701518)

The article presents a system of delay-differential equations which models a semiconductor laser subject to feedback from a phase-conjugating mirror. It shows in detail a one-parameter bifurcation diagram of the system and a transition to chaos via torus break-up. The authors demonstrate the use of new numerical tools for delay-differential equations to detect and understand phenomena like bistability, locking on tori, break-up of tori, and sudden transitions between attractors of different size. The numerical methods for bifurcation analysis were developed by \textit{K. Engelborghs} and \textit{L. Luzyanina} and \textit{D. Roose} [J. Comput. Appl. Math. 125, 265-275 (2000; Zbl 0970.65090)], and the methods for the computation of 1D unstable manifolds of saddle periodic orbits were developed by the first and second author.