A device constituted of an edge-emitting semiconductor laser driven by a van der Pol oscillator is studied analytically and numerically. For small value of the parameter controlling the dissipation in van der Pol oscillator, the Lindstedt–Poincaré method is used to find analytically high accurate solutions of the van der Pol equation with a bias term. Then by using the harmonic balance method, we obtain the amplitude of the oscillatory states of the laser output. The analytical results are compared with those from numerical simulation and a good agreement is obtained. By varying the parameter controlling the dissipation in van der Pol oscillator and the normalized reverse bias saturation of the injection current in the laser, we numerically show that the laser output exhibits a period-doubling route to chaos. The coexistence between periodic and chaotic behaviors is found in edge-emitting semiconductor laser driven by a van der Pol oscillator for specific parameters values. It is demonstrated that the edge-emitting semiconductor laser driven by a van der Pol oscillator generates dynamical behaviors found in edge-emitting semiconductor laser subject to a sine modulated current demonstrating the advantage of using a simple and less bulky electronic device to modulate the semiconductor laser pump current.
