Phase solitons and domain dynamics in an optically injected semiconductor laser

TL;DR

This paper investigates the complex spatio-temporal behavior of a multimode semiconductor laser with optical injection, revealing stable chiral solitons and domain dynamics through experiments and theoretical modeling.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed experimental and theoretical analysis of domain dynamics and chiral solitons in a multimode semiconductor laser with optical injection.

Findings

Observation of stable chiral solitons

Identification of domain shrinking phenomena

Prediction of stable chiral charge based on medium response time

Abstract

We analyze experimentally and theoretically the spatio-temporal dynamics of a highly multimode semiconductor laser with coherent optical injection. Due to the particular geometry of the device (a 1~m long ring cavity), the multimode dynamics can be resolved in real time and we observe stable chiral solitons and domain dynamics. The experiment is analyzed in the framework of a set of effective semiconductor Maxwell-Bloch equations. We analyze the stability of stationary solutions and simulate both the complete model and a reduced rate equation model. This allows us to predict domain shrinking and the stability of only one chiral charge that we ascribe to the finite active medium response time.