Abstract

The cavity soliton laser, based on a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) with Frequency Selective Feedback (FSF) was recently realized both experimentally and theoretically (see [1] for a full review). Lasing does not occur over the whole aperture, rather it occurs on filaments which are much smaller than the aperture and which are stabilized by diffraction and nonlinearity. Hence they are referred to as Laser Cavity Solitons (LCS). They represent coherent individual emitters, i.e. microlasers, and may have different frequencies due to disorder. Here we present a demonstration of LCS mode-locking both numerically and experimentally. Mode-locked LCS have important applications in optical memories and in information processing.

© 2011 IEEE