STRUCTURAL SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES AMONG ATTRACTORS AND THEIR INTENSITY MAPS IN THE LASER-LORENZ MODEL

Numerical studies of the laser-lorenz model using parameters reasonably accessible for recent experiments with a single mode homogeneously broadened laser demonstrate that the form of the return map of successive peak values of the intensity changes from a sharply cusped map in resonance to a map with a smoothly rounded maximum as the laser is detuned into the period doubling regime. This transformation appears to be related to the disappearance (with detuning) of the heteroclinic structural basis for the stable manifold which exists in resonance. This is in contrast to the evidence reported by Tang and Weiss (Phys. Rev. A 49 (1994) 1296) of a cusped map for both the period doubling chaos found with detuning and the spiral chaos found in resonance for seemingly Lorenz-like behavior of the far-infrared ammonia laser from which it was concluded that them existed a ''unique chaotic attractor for a single-mode laser''.