Abstract

Although instabilities in femtosecond lasers have been extensively studied, only a few studies¹ relate such instabilites to contemporary principles of nonlinear dynamics. It is well known that excessive fiber nonlinearity causes severe instabilities in additive-pulse modelocked (APM) lasers, but the nature of the path to instability has not been studied. We have observed period-doubling, and evidence for the period-doubling route to chaos, in an additive-pulse modelocked (APM) F-center laser. Studies of our APM laser indicate that this behavior has different physical origins than the instabilities observed in self-modelocked Ti:Sapphire and CPM lasers.

© 1993 Optical Society of America