New Asymptotic Theory for the Periodically Forced Laser

Sustained relaxation oscillations and irregular spiking have been observed in many periodically modulated lasers [2]. These observations have been substantiated numerically by recent studies of the laser rate equations [3,4]. In this paper, we propose a new asymptotic analysis of the laser equations which assumes that the laser oscillations correspond to relaxation oscillations. We identify a large parameter and construct these periodic solutions using singular perturbation techniques. We obtain the equations for the Poincare map and determine the first period doubling bifurcation.