Abstract

Spatial solitons are localized structures that propagate through nonlinear media keeping their cross section unperturbed due to a balance between diffraction and nonlinearity. When they occur in optical cavities, they are called cavity solitons (CS). CS are present in a large variety of externally driven optical systems. However, their existence in laser systems is limited to the well-known laser with saturable absorber and few other exotic cases (like two-photon lasers, lasers with dense amplifying medium, or lasers pumped by squeezed vacuum). We present here a general method to obtain CS in any kind of lasers, including semiconductor lasers, where this kind of structures would have potential applications in information processing. We use the idea of "rocking" introduced in [1] to generate a phase bistability in the system that leads to the formation of phase domains, labyrinths and dark-ring CS. This performance of the method has been verified experimentally in a laser-like system [2], which confirms its wide applicability. The idea is to inject into the cavity a bichromatic plane wave optical signal, almost in resonance with the free-running laser emission.

© 2007 IEEE