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Longtime behavior of coupled wave equations for semiconductor lasers

Coupled wave equations are popular tool for investigating longitudinal dynamical effects in semiconductor lasers, for example, sensitivity to delayed optical feedback. We study a model that consists of a hyperbolic linear system of partial differential equations with one spatial dimension, which is nonlinearly coupled with a slow subsystem of ordinary differential equations. We first prove the basic statements about the existence of solutions of the initial-boundary-value problem and their smooth dependence on initial values and parameters. Hence, the model constitutes a smooth infinite-dimensional dynamical system. Then we exploit the particular slow-fast structure of the system to construct a low-dimensional attracting invariant manifold for certain parameter constellations. The flow on this invariant manifold is described by a system of ordinary differential equations that is accessible to classical bifurcation theory and numerical tools such as AUTO.