Two-variable reduction of the San Miguel-Feng-Moloney model for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

A basic four-level model for polarization switching of a quantum-well vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser [called the SFM model, San Miguel, er al., Phys. Rev. A,52, 1728 (1995)] is reduced to two equations by using asymptotic methods. The reduced model lends to expressions for all steady and Hopf bifurcation points and allows a systematic bifurcation study of the time-periodic solutions. The bifurcation diagram exhibits several stable states and suggests different types of switching transitions. We show that these transitions strongly depend on unstable limit cycles and that stable elliptically polarized states as well as stable time-periodic states may appear as alternate attractors to the x- or y-polarized states. [S1050-2947(99)00106-7].