ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION Spontaneous periodic and chaotic pulsations have been observed in many fields of physics. At least two of those fields, the physics of fluids and lasers, may even show exactly the same dynamics (i.e., obeying the same nonlinear differential equations) if the relevant physical parameters are chosen appropriately. A compact and minimal set of equations for convective fluid dynamics was developed by Lorenz (1963) for the case of the Rayleigh-Benard convection. Later, Haken (1975) found tha t the equations of a single-mode laser field interacting with a homogeneously broadened two-level medium are exactly the same as those so-called Lorenz equations. Of course, variables and parameters must be interpreted differently in the case of the laser.
