Deterministic chaos in an ytterbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates the nonlinear dynamics of a femtosecond ytterbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser, revealing a route to deterministic chaos through bifurcations and analyzing the system with return maps and Lyapunov exponents.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed experimental characterization of chaos in an ytterbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser, including bifurcation analysis and chaos quantification.

Findings

Identified route to chaos from stable mode-locking to chaos.

Demonstrated deterministic chaos with a positive Lyapunov exponent.

Modeled the chaos using a unidimensional Rossler map.

Abstract

We experimentally study the nonlinear dynamics of a femtosecond ytterbium doped mode-locked fiber laser. With the laser operating in the pulsed regime a route to chaos is presented, starting from stable mode-locking, period two, period four, chaos and period three regimes. Return maps and bifurcation diagrams were extracted from time series for each regime. The analysis of the time series with the laser operating in the quasi mode-locked regime presents deterministic chaos described by an unidimensional Rossler map. A positive Lyapunov exponent $\lambda = 0.14$ confirms the deterministic chaos of the system. We suggest an explanation about the observed map by relating gain saturation and intra-cavity loss.