Chaotically spiking attractors in suspended-mirror optical cavities

A high-finesse suspended-mirror Fabry-Perot cavity is experimentally studied in a regime where radiation pressure and photothermal effect are both relevant. The competition between these phenomena, operating at different timescales, produces unobserved dynamical scenarios where an initial Hopf instability is followed by the birth of small-amplitude chaotic attractors that erratically but deterministically trigger optical spikes. The observed dynamical regimes are well reproduced by a detailed physical model of the system.