Chaos-pass filtering in injection-locked semiconductor lasers

Chaos-pass filtering (CPF) of semiconductor lasers has been studied theoretically. CPF is a phenomenon which occurs in laser chaos synchronization by injection locking and is a fundamental technique for the extraction of messages at the receiver laser in chaotic communications systems. We employ a simple theory based on driven damped oscillators to clarify the physical background of CPF. The receiver laser is optically driven by injection from the transmitter laser. We have numerically investigated the response characteristics of the receiver when it is driven by periodic (message) and chaotic (carrier) signals. It is thereby revealed that the response of the receiver laser in the two cases is quite different. For the periodic drive, the receiver exhibits a response depending on the signal frequency, while the chaotic drive provides a frequency-independent synchronous response to the receiver laser. We verify that the periodic and chaotic drives occur independently in the CPF response, and, consequently, CPF can be clearly understood in the difference of the two drives. Message extraction using CPF is also examined, and the validity of our theoretical explanation for the physical mechanism underlying CPF is thus verified.