P. Genevet

Cavity Soliton Laser based on mutually coupled semiconductor microresonators

We report on experimental observation of localized structures in two mutually coupled broad-area semiconductor resonators, one of which acts as a saturable absorber. These structures coexist with a dark homogeneous background and they have the same properties as cavity solitons without requiring the presence of a driving beam into the system. They can be switched individually on and off by means of a local addressing beam.

All-optical delay line using semiconductor cavity solitons

An all-optical delay line based on the lateral drift of cavity solitons in semiconductor microresonators is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The functionalities of the device proposed as well as its performance is analyzed and compared with recent alternative methods based on the decrease of group velocity in the vicinity of resonances. We show that the current limitations can be overcome using broader devices with tailored material responses.

Positioning cavity solitons with a phase mask

Nonlinear interaction between a coherent electric field and a semiconductor medium inside a high Fresnel number cavity may give rise to the formation of cavity solitons. It is theoretically predicted that the position of these structures, mutually independent and bistable, can be controlled by gradients in the injection beam. Using a liquid crystal light valve to spatially modulate the phase of a coherent beam injected into a broad area vertical cavity semiconductor laser, the authors create reconfigurable arrays of cavity solitons. Fast time scales associated with semiconductor lasers and plasticity of localized structures suggest their potential for optical data processing.

Physics and Properties of Cavity Soliton Lasers

We show the appearance of cavity solitons in two mutually coupled broad area VCSEL’s. We describe the physical processes at their origin and we discuss their properties. We compare experimental with theoretical results.

Controlling position and motion of cavity solitons

This article presents a technique to control the position and motion of cavity solitons.

Slow light and all-optical delay lines using cavity solitons in semiconductor lasers

An all-optical delay line that is based on injecting an optical bit stream into an optical resonator, creating cavity solitons (CS) that drift transversely with a controllable velocity, is proposed and demonstrated. An optical injection experiment is performed in a broad area vertical cavity surface emitting laser emitting at 980 nm.

Intersubband plasmons induced negative refraction at mid-IR frequency in heterostructured semiconductor metamaterials

We theoretically and experimentally demonstrate negative refraction in a semiconductorsystem operating at mid-infrared wavelengths. Such effect is generic and realized by electrons quantum confinement in quantum wells, acting as an adjustable resonance.

Observation of “True” Optical Vortices in a Laser System

We briefly review a series of experiments performed at the Institut Nonlineaire de Nice on localized structures in semiconductor optical devices. We concentrate our attention on the observation of localized single addressable optical vortices. This type of optical vortices, predicted theoretically more than 30 years ago, have been only observed recently in a system formed by two vertical cavity surface emitter lasers (VCSELs) in a face-to-face configuration. We describe the experimental setup and we discuss the results and the reasons for which such a system is able to display “true” optical vortices.

Localized states, Q-switching and excitability in coupled semiconductor microcavities

Excitability is a very generic feature of several kinds of nonlinear dynamical systems (including biological and optical ones) defined by the threshold-like response of the system to external perturbations. In particular, the excitable character of a laser with saturable absorber has been demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally in absence of any spatial degree of freedom [1]. On the other hand, a semiconductor laser with saturable absorber with sufficiently high transverse extension is known to support the formation of localized structures [2]. These two considerations naturally raise the question of the existence of excitable localized states: can the excitable character of the system still be present in a parameter range corresponding to transverse localization? Even if excitability mediated by localized structures has been observed numerically in a model of a dissipative (Kerr) nonlinear optical cavity [3], no experimental observation of excitability has been reported to date in spatially extended optical systems. We therefore explore the dynamical regimes exhibited by a system consisting of two coupled semiconductor lasers in an absorber-amplifier configuration, a system known to host localized states [4].

Spectral properties of laser solitons in coupled semiconductor resonators

We report on the multistable emission frequency of laser solitons and show that independent laser solitons are not mutually coherent while the peaks of a cluster have a well established mutual phase relationship.