Homoclinic orbits and cycles in the instabilities of a laser with a saturable absorber

Daniel Hennequin, Ferdinando de Tomasi, Bruno Zambon, Ennio Arimondo

Phys. Rev. A 37 2243 (1988)

The phase-space evolution for the instabilities in a CO2 laser with an intracavity saturable absorber is investigated experimentally. The different scenarios corresponding to limit cycles, homoclinic orbits and cycles involving two unstable points, and chaotic behavior are investigated. A theoretical analysis of the experimental results is sketched out.