Abstract
Mutual coupling and injection locking of semiconductor lasers is of great interest in non-linear dynamics and its applications for instance in secure data communication and photonic reservoir computing. Despite its importance, it has hardly been studied in microlasers operating at μW light levels. In this context, vertically emitting quantum dot micropillar lasers are of high interest. Usually, their light emission is bimodal, and the gain competition of the associated linearly polarized fundamental emission modes results in complex switching dynamics. We report on selective optical injection into either one of the two fundamental mode components of a bimodal micropillar laser. Both modes can lock to the master laser and influence the non-injected mode by reducing the available gain. We demonstrate that the switching dynamics can be tailored externally via optical injection in very good agreement with our theory based on semi-classical rate equations.
Highlights
Cavity-enhanced micro- and nanolasers are state-of-the-art solid state nanophotonic devices based on dielectric or plasmonic resonators [1,2,3,4,5]
We report on selective optical injection into either one of the two fundamental mode components of a bimodal micropillar laser
We demonstrate that the switching dynamics can be tailored externally via optical injection in very good agreement with our theory based on semi-classical rate equations
Summary
Cavity-enhanced micro- and nanolasers are state-of-the-art solid state nanophotonic devices based on dielectric or plasmonic resonators [1,2,3,4,5]. Combined with a suitable low-dimensional gain medium, such resonators show very interesting physical properties like few-emitters lasing [6, 7], thresholdless lasing [8] and spiking dynamics [9] Their exciting properties emerge from the combination of low-dimensional gain centers and cavities with very low mode volumes and high quality factors (Q) which enable enhanced light-matter coupling in the regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) [10] and lead to high spontaneous emission factors (β-factor) [11]. Such non-classical characteristics make these nanophotonic devices especially appealing for applications in nanotechnology as, for instance, resonant excitation source for the generation of indistinguishable photons [12]. Interesting complex dynamics are presented by vertically emitting lasers, where polarization chaoticswitching dynamics can be induced by optical injection [19, 20], with potential applications in microwave generation [21] and in all-optical flip-flop photonic integrated devices [22,23,24]
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