Multiparameter bifurcations and mixed-mode oscillations in Q-switched CO2 lasers

Experimental investigation of the period-adding bifurcation route to chaos in plasma

Since the characteristic timescales of the various transport processes inside the discharge plasma span several orders of magnitude, it can be regarded as a typical fast-slow system. Interestingly, in this work, a special kind of complex oscillatory dynamics composed of a series of large-amplitude relaxation oscillations and small-amplitude near-harmonic oscillations, namely, mixed-mode oscillations (MMOs), was observed. By using the ballast resistance as the control parameter, a period-adding bifurcation sequence of the MMOs, i.e., from L^{s} to L^{s+1}, was obtained in a low-pressure DC glow discharge system. Meanwhile, a series of intermittently chaotic regions caused by inverse saddle-node bifurcation was embedded between the two adjacent periodic windows. The formation mechanism of MMOs was analyzed, and the results indicated that the competition between electron production and electron loss plays an important role. Meanwhile, the nonlinear time series analysis technique was used to study the dynamic behavior quantitatively. The attractor in the reconstructed phase space indicated the existence of the homoclinic orbits of type Γ^{-}. In addition, by calculating the largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE), the chaotic nature of these states was confirmed and quantitatively characterized. With the decrease in the ballast resistance, the return map of the chaotic state gradually changed from the nearly one-dimensional single-peak structure to the multibranch structure, which indicates that the dissipation of the system decreased. By further calculating the correlation dimension, it was shown that the complexity of the strange attractors increased for higher-order chaotic states.

Correlation sum scalings from mixed-mode oscillations in weakly coupled molecular lasers

A model for two symmetrically coupled lasers is investigated, in which mixed-mode oscillations arise in the absence of coupling. For small enough coupling, we show that in the time series, certain dynamical transitions from different resonances in the chaotic regime may be explained by the overlap of suitable resonances. These are families of N : N + 1 resonances, which result in isolas as well as isolas consisting of intermediate-phase resonances N : N. It appears that the overlap of resonances can explain the onset of two different scaling regions in the dimension correlation sum, which display an explicit dependence on the optical coupling strength. For very small coupling ranges, there are larger scaling regions that look analogous to that for the uncoupled laser system. For larger coupling, but still well below the synchronization threshold, steeper and larger scaling regions arise, in particular, in the smaller partitions.

Rare events in mixed-mode oscillations from weakly coupled lasers

We study a dynamical system consisting of two mutually coupled molecular lasers, each of which shows mixed-mode oscillations and chaos when uncoupled. The type of coupling, incoherent laser interaction via saturable absorbers is an example of inhibitory nonlinear coupling, which is also found in Hodgkin-Huxley models that describe action potentials in neurons. We have carried out extensive numerical bifurcation analysis and numerical simulations to show that for small-enough coupling, well below the chaotic synchronization threshold, the presence of distinctive resonances in a symmetric mirror configuration of the system generates a type of rare events characterized by very small amplitudes. When this symmetry is broken by introducing a relatively small difference between the lasers pump parameters near an in-phase Hopf bifurcation, we observe extreme rare events (rogue waves) in one of the lasers. In this case the outliers deviate from power-law distributions and are reminiscent of those known as dragon kings. We consider the conditions for both types of rare events to occur, their origin, as well as relevant statistical features.

Extreme and superextreme events in a loss-modulated CO_{2} laser: Nonlinear resonance route and precursors

We investigate the occurrence of extreme and rare events, i.e., giant and rare light pulses, in a periodically modulated CO_{2} laser model. Due to nonlinear resonant processes, we show a scenario of interaction between chaotic bands of different orders, which may lead to the formation of extreme and rare events. We identify a crisis line in the modulation parameter space, and we show that, when the modulation amplitude increases, remaining in the vicinity of the crisis, some statistical properties of the laser pulses, such as the average and dispersion of amplitudes, do not change much, whereas the amplitude of extreme events grows enormously, giving rise to extreme events with much larger deviations than usually reported, with a significant probability of occurrence, i.e., with a long-tailed non-Gaussian distribution. We identify recurrent regular patterns, i.e., precursors, that anticipate the emergence of extreme and rare events, and we associate these regular patterns with unstable periodic orbits embedded in a chaotic attractor. We show that the precursors may or may not lead to the emergence of extreme events. Thus, we compute the probability of success or failure (false alarm) in the prediction of the extreme events, once a precursor is identified in the deterministic time series. We show that this probability depends on the accuracy with which the precursor is identified in the laser intensity time series.

Self-organization of pulsing and bursting in a CO2 laser with opto-electronic feedback

We report a detailed investigation of the stability of a CO2 laser with feedback as described by a six-dimensional rate-equations model which provides satisfactory agreement between numerical and experimental results. We focus on experimentally accessible parameters, like bias voltage, feedback gain, and the bandwidth of the feedback loop. The impact of decay rates and parameters controlling cavity losses are also investigated as well as control planes which imply changes of the laser physical medium. For several parameter combinations, we report stability diagrams detailing how laser spiking and bursting is organized over extended intervals. Laser pulsations are shown to emerge organized in several hitherto unseen regular and irregular phases and to exhibit a much richer and complex range of behaviors than described thus far. A significant observation is that qualitatively similar organization of laser spiking and bursting can be obtained by tuning rather distinct control parameters, suggesting the existence of unexpected symmetries in the laser control space.

Nested arithmetic progressions of oscillatory phases in Olsen's enzyme reaction model

We report some regular organizations of stability phases discovered among self-sustained oscillations of a biochemical oscillator. The signature of such organizations is a nested arithmetic progression in the number of spikes of consecutive windows of periodic oscillations. In one of them, there is a main progression of windows whose consecutive number of spikes differs by one unit. Such windows are separated by a secondary progression of smaller windows whose number of spikes differs by two units. Another more complex progression involves a fan-like nested alternation of stability phases whose number of spikes seems to grow indefinitely and to accumulate methodically in cycles. Arithmetic progressions exist abundantly in several control parameter planes and can be observed by tuning just one among several possible rate constants governing the enzyme reaction.