We analyse the effect of optical feedback on the dynamics of external-cavity mode-locked semiconductor lasers operated in the long cavity regime. Depending on the ratio between the cavity round-trip time and the feedback delay, we show experimentally that feedback acts as a solution discriminator that either reinforces or hinders the appearance of one of the multiple coexisting mode-locked harmonic solutions. Our theoretical analysis reproduces well the experiment. We identify asymmetrical resonance tongues due to the temporal symmetry breaking induced by gain depletion.
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