Two-variable reduction of the San Miguel-Feng-Moloney model for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

A basic four-level model for polarization switching of a quantum-well verti cal-cavity surface-emitting laser [called the SFM model, San Miguel, er al. , Phys. Rev. A,52, 1728 (1995)] is reduced to two equations by using asympt otic methods. The reduced model lends to expressions for all steady and Hop f bifurcation points and allows a systematic bifurcation study of the time- periodic solutions. The bifurcation diagram exhibits several stable states and suggests different types of switching transitions. We show that these t ransitions strongly depend on unstable limit cycles and that stable ellipti cally polarized states as well as stable time-periodic states may appear as alternate attractors to the x- or y-polarized states. [S1050-2947(99)00106 -7].