Optical vortices crystals: spontaneous generation in nonlinear semiconductor microcavities

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Laser Physics
• Nonlinear Optics
• Complex Systems Dynamics

Background:

• Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) typically emit simple, regular light fields.
• Understanding complex light patterns in lasers is crucial for advanced optical applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the origin and nature of complex
• dark beam
• emission patterns in broad-area VCSELs.
• To determine if these patterns result from multimode operation or nonlinear dynamics.

Main Methods:

• Experimental observation of emission modes in broad-area VCSELs.
• Analysis of the structure of
• dark spot
• arrays using optical vortex characterization.
• Spectroscopic analysis to determine single-frequency characteristics.

Main Results:

• VCSELs transitioned from regular emission to complex
• dark beam
• arrays.
• These arrays consist of closely packed optical vortices with increasing complexity at higher injection currents.
• The complex patterns exhibit single-frequency characteristics, contradicting multimode operation expectations.

Conclusions:

• The observed
• dark beam
• patterns originate from a spontaneous transverse mode-locking process.
• Laser nonlinearity plays a key role in forming these complex, single-frequency light distributions.
• The phenomenon shows remarkable similarity to patterns in unrelated nonlinear systems, suggesting universal nonlinear dynamics.