Pure frequency oscillations of semiconductor lasers with filtered optical feedback

A semiconductor laser subject to delayed filtered optical feedback can show pure frequency oscillations with a period of the order to the delay time, while the power remains practically constant. This is remarkable in light of the strong self-phase modulation in semiconductor lasers that couples frequency and power. It turns out that the dynamics of the filter plays an essential role in this behavior, because it changes the instantaneous amount of feedback in response to the instantaneous laser frequency. By using numerical bifurcation techniques we show how frequency oscillations bifurcate in Hopf bifurcations from the continuous wave solutions known as external filtered modes.