Dynamics of Semiconductor Lasers Subject to Delayed Optical Feedback: The Short Cavity Regime

We give experimental and numerical evidence for a new dynamical regime in the operation of semiconductor lasers subject to delayed optical feedback occurring for short delay times. This short cavity regime is dominated by a striking dynamical phenomenon: regular pulse packages forming a robust low-frequency state with underlying fast, regular intensity pulsations. We demonstrate that these regular pulse packages correspond to trajectories moving on global orbits comprising several destabilized fixed points within the complicated phase space structure of this delay system.