Analysis and characterisation of experimental real-time series of a semiconductor laser under optical injection

Optical injection into a semiconductor laser is a promising technique for generating optical microwave oscillations and chaotic signals as well as enhancing the characteristics of the injected laser. Conventionally the dynamic state of the output of the slave laser (SL) is mapped in the parameter plane of frequency detuning between the master laser (ML) and the SL, and that of the injected power. These can be generated using methods such as the Correlation Dimension Analysis (CDA) [1] to analyse the time series of the output of the SL. However such techniques often incur a notable computational cost and only partly characterise the features of the dynamics. Moreover the processing of experimental data found in the literature usually focuses on where periodic or chaotic dynamics can be found [2] while most of the main signal features are either discarded or not fully mapped [3]. In this work we propose a novel approach for the analysis of the time series of a semiconductor laser under optical injection based on the use of a combination of basic data analysis techniques. Using these we produce a richer representation of the experimental stability maps which provides new and useful insight into the characteristics of the non-linear dynamics, and present the first experimental mapping, to our knowledge, of the frequency of period one (P1) dynamics. © 2011 IEEE.