T. Erneux et al., Two-variable reduction of the San Miguel-Feng-Moloney model for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, PHYS REV A, 59(6), 1999, pp. 4660-4667
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].