Stability and bifurcations in Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti : sapphire lasers

Kerr-lens or self-mode-locked Ti:sapphire lasers are known to display sever al modes of operation, depending on the values taken by the system's parame ters. The basic observed modes of operation are: continuous wave, mode lock ing with transform limited pulses, and mode locking with chirped pulses. Th ese modes are naturally obtained from a description based on an iterative o r Poincare map of five pulse variables (beam size curvature, pulse duration , chirp and energy). The stability of these modes is obtained for an experi mentally accessible range of the parameters. The theoretical predictions ag ree qualitatively with the experimental observations. For a particular bifu rcation, we study the feasibility of an approximate description of the (fiv e variables) dynamics with a one-variable map, which results in the logisti c map. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.