SEMICONDUCTOR-LASER DYNAMICS FOR FEEDBACK FROM A FINITE-PENETRATION-DEPTH PHASE-CONJUGATE MIRROR

Most of the previous treatments of semiconductor lasers subject to opt ical feedback from a phase-conjugate mirror (PCM) have assumed that th e PCM responds instantaneously. Furthermore, the mechanism responsible for phase conjugation does not usually enter into the analysis, In th is paper, we derive tile time-dependent reflectivity of a PCM created through nondegenerate four-wave mixing its a Kerr-type nonlinear mediu m. The resulting laser dynamics are compared with the case of the idea l PCM, as a function of the external-cavity lengah, tile PCM reflectiv ity, and the PCM interaction depth, The PCM with a significant interac tion depth tends to suppress otherwise chaotic output and produces pul ses whose repetition rate is tunable by varying PCM reflectivity. At h igh feedback levels, it stabilizes the laser output, We use the circle -map formalism to explain our numerical results.