a Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bates College, 44 Campus Avenue, Lewiston, ME 04240, USA b Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Edificio Juan Jorda, Campus Universitario, Avada Los Castros s/n, E-39005 Santander, Spain
Abstract:
We have experimentally studied polarization instabilities in the multi-transverse-mode regime of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser subject to polarized optical feedback. A dynamical regime that is similar to the transition from the so called low frequency fluctuation (LFF) to coherence collapse (CC) in the single-transverse-mode VCSEL is found and investigated. The role of higher order transverse modes is to increase the irregularity of the dynamics as shown experimentally and numerically.