Controlling Fast Chaos in Delay Dynamical Systems

We introduce a novel approach for controlling fast chaos in time-delay dynamical systems and use it to control a chaotic photonic device with a characteristic time scale of $\sim 12\mathrm{ns}$. Our approach is a prescription for how to implement existing chaos-control algorithms in a way that exploits the system’s inherent time delay and allows control even in the presence of substantial control-loop latency (the finite time it takes signals to propagate through the components in the controller). This research paves the way for applications exploiting fast control of chaos, such as chaos-based communication schemes and stabilizing the behavior of ultrafast lasers.