Controlling chaos in nonlinear optical resonators

This article presents an analytical method for controlling the chaos in two nonlinear bistable optical resonators. The devices are a bulk cavity ring oscillator and a nonlinear simple fibre ring resonator. It is shown that there is a trade-off between flexibility and controllability in such devices. For the first time, as far as the authors are aware, theoretical studies have shown that by controlling the chaos within a bistable region it becomes possible to use a previously unstable device as a bistable resonator. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.