Abstract. The joint influence of stochastic frequency drift and optical injection on the dynamical behaviour of a rate-equation laser model is studied. When the autocorrelation time of the frequency fluctuations is larger than the typical timescales of the system's dynamics, and the amplitude of the frequency drift is larger than the injection locking range, the laser exhibits bursting behaviour at irregular times, each burst being followed by relaxation oscillations towards the unlocked state. The conditions under which this type of phenomenon occurs are fulfilled in fibre lasers. Accordingly, numerical simulation results of the model agree satisfactorily with the experimentally observed behaviour of an injected fibre ring laser.

Keywords: fibre laser, bursting, Ornstein–Uhlenbeck noise, optical injection, multimode laser, stochastic processes, coloured noise, frequency locking

Print publication: Issue 8 (August 2004)
Received 13 November 2003, accepted for publication 20 January 2004
Published 27 July 2004