Manipulation of temporal localized structures in a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser with optical feedback

Abstract

We analyze the effect of optical feedback on the dynamics of an external-cavity passively mode-locked surface-emitting laser operating in the regime of temporal localized structures. Depending on the ratio between the cavity round trip time and the feedback delay, we show experimentally that feedback acts as a solution selector that either reinforces or hinders the appearance of one of the multistable harmonic arrangements of pulses. Our theoretical analysis reproduces well the experiment and allows us to evidence asymmetrical resonance tongues due to the parity symmetry-breaking induced by gain depletion.