The nonuniqueness and instability of the combustion regimes of a gaseous mixture under the action of laser radiation

We present the results of a theoretical investigation of the dynamical behavior of a chemically active gaseous mixture during the action of nonlinear laser radiation. The regions of possible combustion regimes are delineated by Lyapunov's first method. We show that, as a consequence of the temperature dependence of the mixture absorption coefficient, the number of steady states is increased to five. Data from a linear analysis confirms the numerical experiments.