Abnormal chiral events in a semiconductor laser with coherent injection

Abstract

We study experimentally and theoretically the dynamics of a spatially extended (along the propagation direction) oscillatory medium with coherent forcing. We observe abnormally high events, responsible for a different statistics of intensity and pulse height, in a regime where solitons and roll patterns are unstable. We focus on the formation of these high-peak events and their connection to the phase dynamics. Each abnormal event can be associated with a change in the slope of the phase time trace. Furthermore, the coexistence of ±2π phase rotations inside the cavity can be associated to the observation of abnormal events, similarly to recent predictions in bidimensional vortex turbulence.

Properties of Phase Solitons in an Optically Driven Semiconductor Ring Laser

“…Consequently during a roundtrip time the phase evolves as a positive kink from 0 to 2π. Further studies have shown that phase solitons display long range interaction and can form complexes with multiple chiral charge [13] or give rise to complex dynamics and extreme or abnormal events [14,15].…”