Laser Chaotic Attractors in Crisis

Didier Dangoisse, Pierre Glorieux, Daniel Hennequin

Phys. Rev. Lett. 57 2657 (1986)

Different crises, i.e., abrupt qualitative changes in the properties of attractors, have been observed in a CO2 laser with internal modulation. They are shown to be related to crossing between a stable or unstable periodic cycle and the strange attractor resulting from the period-doubling cascade observed at low modulation levels. Depending on the operating conditions, boundary and interior crises have been observed.