Consistency Properties of a Chaotic Semiconductor Laser Driven by Optical Feedback

We experimentally study consistency properties of a semiconductor laser in response to a coherent optical drive originating from delayed feedback. The laser is connected to a short and a long optical fiber loop, switched such that only one is providing input to the laser at a time. This way, repeating the exact same optical drive twice, we find consistent or inconsistent responses depending on the pump parameter and we relate the kind of response to strong and weak chaos. Moreover, we are able to experimentally determine the sub-Lyapunov exponent, underlying the consistency properties.