Abstract

The recent exploitation of random lasers (RLs) as a photonic platform for studying complex systems, such as spin glasses, has opened new cross-disciplinary avenues for understanding RL behavior. Recent theoretical approaches based on Langevin equations for the dynamics of the mode amplitudes have now unified the descriptions of the Gaussian-to-Lévy and paramagnetic-to-spin-glass phase transitions at the RL threshold. We have also demonstrated the universality of such phase transitions in a wide variety of RL systems.

© 2016 Optical Society of America