Abstract
Symbolic transfer entropy (STE) is employed to quantify the dominant direction of information flow between two chaotic-semiconductor-laser time series. The information flow in unidirectionally and bidirectionally coupled systems was analyzed systematically. Numerical results show that the dependence relationship can be revealed if there exists any coupling between two chaotic semiconductor lasers. More importantly, in both unsynchronized and good synchronization regimes, the STE can be used to quantify the direction of information flow between the lasers, although the former case leads to a better identification. The results thus establish STE as an effective tool for quantifying the direction of information flow between chaotic-laser-based systems.