Cavity Soliton Laser based on coupled micro-resonators

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of localized laser structures in a compound laser system consisting of two mutually coupled broad-area Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers (VCSELs), one of which is operated as a saturable absorber. As cavity solitons appearing in a VCSEL driven by a coherent driving beam, these localized structures coexist with a dark homogeneous background and they can be individually addressed by a local perturbation. On the other hand, they are generated in a laser device (hence called Cavity Soliton Laser, CSL) that does not require a driving field.We explore the parameter space of the CSL to map the region of existence of the localized laser structures and to give evidence of multi-peaks and ring-like laser states. We describe the bifurcation diagram associated to the formation of these complexes which, as the single-peak structures, can be switched by means of a local addressing beam. Localized laser structures have multistable emission frequency associated to coexisting compound cavity longitudinal modes.