Quenched disorder is commonly investigated in the context of many body systems such as a varying magnetic field in interacting spin models, or frequency variance of interacting oscillators. It is often difficult to study the effect of disorder on these systems experimentally since it requires a method to change its properties in a controlled fashion. In this work, we study the effect of quenched disorder in the form of frequency detuning on a coupled lasers array using a novel degenerate cavity with tunable disorder and coupling strength. By controlling the properties of the disorder such as its magnitude and spatial correlations, we measure the gradual decrease of phase locking due to the effects of disorder and demonstrate that the effects of disorder depend on the ratio between its correlation length and the size of the phase locked cluster.

We introduce a method to enhance the phase-locking quality and duration of an end-pumped laser array by precisely shaping its pump beam to overlap with the array. Shaping the pump beam results in a significant improvement in lasing efficiency and reduces the pump power required to reach the lasing threshold compared to a typical uniform pumping configuration. Our approach involves shaping a highly incoherent laser beam by addressing smaller segments of the beam with higher local spatial coherence. We demonstrate a remarkable increase in the laser array output brightness by up to a factor of 10, accompanied by a substantial extension in the phase-locking duration.